Polling expert loses it over new poll showing Trump is crushing Biden by double digits: 'So absurd on its face'



Political prediction expert Larry Sabato called out the Washington Post on Sunday over a new poll showing Donald Trump leading President Joe Biden by double digits.

What did the poll show?

The shocking Washington Post/ABC News poll found that if the election were held today, Trump would crush Biden among registered voters, 52% to 42%.

Moreover, the survey found that Biden's job approval stands at a dismal 37% — a metric that in and of itself signals Biden will lose re-election — because the majority of Americans disapprove of Biden's handling of the economy and the border crisis.

To make matters worse for Biden, approximately two-thirds of Democratic voters and Democratic-leaning voters want the Democratic Party to nominate someone other than Biden in 2024. Most of those respondents aren't picky about who his successor is — they just want someone other than Biden.

The poll also found that most Americans do not believe Biden is being unfairly targeted by House Republicans, who have opened an impeachment inquiry over allegations of corruption against Biden. Instead, 58% of respondents said Biden is being "held accountable" while just 32% said he is being "unfairly victimized by his political opponents."

What was the reaction?

Sabato, a professor of politics at the University of Virginia, condemned the Washington Post for publishing the poll because, in his view, the results are "laughable."

"Ignore the Washington Post – ABC poll. It’s a ridiculous outlier (Trump up 10 over Biden—laughable)," Sabato reacted. "My question: How could you even publish a poll so absurd on its face? Will be a lingering embarrassment for you."

— (@)

In another reaction post, Sabato said he is "torn between scoffing and laughing" at the poll's results.

Another data expert, Nate Cohn of the New York Times, also called out the Washington Post for describing the poll as "probably an outlier."

"It's really really hard to release outlying poll results, so you've got to give credit to ABC/Post here, but I do have a fairly major quibble with ABC/Post here: if you release consecutive 'outlying' poll results — R+7 in May, R+10 today — you don't get to dismiss your results," Cohn reacted.

"If it happens twice in a row in the same race, it's clear that this is the result of some element of your approach, and either you either need to decide you're good with it and defend it or you need to go home," he said.

— (@)

While the poll seems like an outlier because no other survey has shown Trump with such a significant lead — almost every other poll shows Trump and Biden locked in a dead heat within the statistical margin of error — it's not clear what in the poll's methodology may have produced the result.

Some critics have suggested Republicans were oversampled, but the poll asked respondents about their party affiliation. Only 25% identified as Republican, while 25% identified as Democrats and 42% identified as independents.

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Is the red wave crashing? Polling expert says critical 'warning sign is flashing again' — and it's not good for Dems



As the 2022 midterm election nears, polls increasingly indicate that Democrats will be more competitive than previously thought. The red tsunami, which once looked menacing, now appears to be nothing more than a small ripple.

But polling expert Nate Cohn explained this week a key "warning sign is flashing again," suggesting polls are overestimating Democrats' prospects.

What are the details?

Jen Psaki, the former White House press secretary turned MSNBC employee, claimed Tuesday that election forecasts have "flipped," now showing Democrats in the driver's seat less than two months from Election Day.

Indeed, polls are increasingly showing Democrats may not lose control of the Senate and potentially even the House. But those polls do not tell the whole story.

Cohn wrote in the New York Times that ahead of the 2020 presidential election, Joe Biden was outperforming then-President Donald Trump in many of the same regions of the country where polls overestimated support for Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election.

Such overestimation in favor of Democrats appears to be happening again.

"That warning sign is flashing again: Democratic Senate candidates are outrunning expectations in the same places where the polls overestimated Mr. Biden in 2020 and Mrs. Clinton in 2016," Cohn wrote.

Cohn highlighted one Senate race in particular — Republican Sen. Ron Johnson's battle against Democrat Mandela Barnes in Wisconsin — as a potential bellwether for bad polling after a recent Marquette Law School poll showed Barnes leading Johnson by a significant margin of 7 points.

Cohn explained:

But in this case, good for Wisconsin Democrats might be too good to be true. The state was ground zero for survey error in 2020, when pre-election polls proved to be too good to be true for Mr. Biden. In the end, the polls overestimated Mr. Biden by about eight percentage points. Eerily enough, Mr. Barnes is faring better than expected by a similar margin.

The Wisconsin data is just one example of a broader pattern across the battlegrounds: The more the polls overestimated Mr. Biden last time, the better Democrats seem to be doing relative to expectations. And conversely, Democrats are posting less impressive numbers in some of the states where the polls were fairly accurate two years ago, like Georgia.

When Cohn plotted the places where polls overestimated Democrats, he discovered a "consistent link between Democratic strength today and polling error two years ago."

What is causing the error?

According to Cohn, "persistent and unaddressed biases" in survey methodology — like nonresponse bias — is causing pollsters to derive misleading polls.

What this means practically, he explained, is that what appears to be Democratic strength in the run-up to the election could actually be nothing more than a "mirage."

If the same polling errors from previous elections persist this year, Republicans will handily win the House and could even take control of the Senate.

Analysis: Why Fox News was wrong and President Trump still has a legitimate chance to take Arizona



Immediately after Fox News — and then later the Associated Press — called Arizona for Biden in the very early stages of Election Day reporting, the Trump campaign and many supporters of President Trump cried foul and insisted their candidate still had a path to victory in the Sun Belt state.

On Thursday, while roughly 600,000 votes still remained to be counted, a defiant Trump campaign doubled down and told reporters they were still predicting victory in the state by a margin of 30,000 votes.

At first, their insistence seemed desperate since the remaining ballots to be counted in the state were early voter ballots, which pretty much everywhere else in the country were going to Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden at a 2:1 ratio.

But then the results started coming in Thursday and sure enough, Trump appeared to be cutting into Biden's lead by taking close to 60% of the votes. After Wednesday's reporting, Biden's lead was cut in Arizona to 67,906.

The reason for this is that, though they are in fact early voters, the group of voters yet to be counted in Arizona could be called "late early voters," and they tend to skew Republican by a pretty significant margin. These late early voters are voters who dropped off their mail-in ballots only a day or two before Election Day.

Tom Bonier, the CEO of Target Smart uploaded a data graph that shows how votes broke down in Arizona by the dates they were filed. The closer it gets to Election Day, the more the party registration skews towards Republican.

@Nate_Cohn Here's a raw look at party reg by return date. The graphic above doesn't include Election Day, but this… https://t.co/poEg9EvCmK
— Tom Bonier (@Tom Bonier)1604519991.0

That data squares with what Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien told reporters Wednesday: "Based on the math that we have been seeing as these late-arriving ballots are counted, anywhere from two-thirds to 70 percent of these votes are coming to the president, that math adds up to a margin of around 30,000 in the president's favor."

For what it's worth, MSNBC actually did a great job explaining this, as well:

Rachel Maddow's reaction to realizing President Trump is on track to win Arizona: "Oh God!" https://t.co/60KZ2sT8ja
— Trump War Room - Text TRUMP to 88022 (@Trump War Room - Text TRUMP to 88022)1604545397.0

This is why most news outlets predicting the race have yet to project a Biden win in the state and why President Trump still has a legitimate chance to win it.

Should the president carry Arizona and maintain his lead in Pennsylvania and Georgia, that would get him the 270 electoral college votes need to secure a second term.