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Some early theories on went went wrong with the pre-election polling this

 Before we go into what went wrong, let's just call a spade a spade here: this was a bad polling error. It's comparable to 2016 in size, but pollsters don't have the excuses they did last time.
This year's polls would have been *way* worse than 2016 with a 2016 methodology
There are really two halves of polling: the quality of the sample you get, and the adjustments you take to improve the representativeness of your sample.
Since 2016, pollsters got better at the adjustments, but the underlying sample got worse
To my mind, the easiest way to see it: the crosstabs on white voters nationwide, particularly whites without a degree
In 2016, the polls *did* show Trump doing way better among those voters.
In 2020, they did not. And they were dead wrong.
Same story with seniors.
So what happened? How did the samples get that much worse over the last four years, especially among white voters without a degree and seniors?
At this stage, it's really just speculation. We'll know more later--it's too early for an autopsy.
But here's some early speculation
Let's start with the most interesting bit of theorizing I encountered, from always interesting @davidshor.
He thinks it's the pandemic: Dems took it seriously, stayed home and started responding to polls more. GOP did not.
This theory's almost too smooth to be true, but it's elegant and fits a lot of things together.
Remember those studies that said Biden does better in a COVID hotspot?
Well, Biden didn't do better in COVID hotspots.
So maybe... that just means the polls were biased by COVID
Another interesting thing it helps explain.
Our 10/19 battleground polls were... pretty accurate!
So were the state polls conducted from Jan-Mar 20.
Now, maybe these polls were just as bad--and Trump actually led big back then!
Or maybe... the bias started since then
Shor also put forward some data that's at least plausibly consistent with it. The increase in Dem response clearly happens before the pandemic, in the primary. But maybe it held because of the primary
There are some other theories worth consideration, too.
It's possible that four more years of Trump did four more years worth of damage to the credibility of media/polls, creating a 'hidden Trump' vote that didn't really exist in 2016
On the flip side, another possibility is the resistance: the huge surge of political activism on the left. We know political engagement is correlated with survey response. Maybe the folks now donating 100 millions to Senate races are now taking polls way more than four years ago
And a final possibility--and ultimately a falsifiable one--is the turnout.
There were a lot of polls showing no LV/RV gap or even a D turnout edge. Not sure that will hold up with final data.
It certainly didn't hold up in FL, where we have great data already.
Anyway, I do think it will take a while to get some better answers here. If you're looking for a polling autopsy, then I'd say the 'body' of polling is still at the scene of the crime and won't make it to the morgue for a bit.
But the fact that we don't have an autopsy wouldn't stop the police from acknowledging the existence of a dead body, and we don't need to shy away from the obvious, either: the poll results were quite bad, and the final numbers won't fundamentally change that

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Another day of strong early voting in Georgia, with another 154k voters turning out in person yesterday. That's similar to but slightly behind the fourth day of early voting in the general, which was at 164k

Cumulatively, we're still running ahead of the general election on in-person early voting, but I don't think anyone expects that to last--and there's a very long time left for that flip to happen


As I've said, the big takeaway is that the turnout looks like it will be healthy and high, and it's not obvious who it will help v. the general. As I've mentioned, there are crosscutting patterns at play that make it difficult to sort out where we'll end up. Let's look at a few

One is that there are fewer absentee votes--and those are heavily Democratic.
This is expected: far fewer realistic opportunities for voters to request a ballot for this special than the general. And some counties may be behind


Now, of course, if in-person and election day voting drop just as much (or more), then this isn't actually an issue for Democrats at all. That would have been a very reasonable assumption before early voting. Now I'm not totally sure! We'll have to wait and see
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Nate Cohn
Nate Cohn
@Nate_Cohn
Joe Biden leads Donald Trump in Pennsylvania and Florida, according to new Times/Siena polls taken after the first debate.
Biden leads in Pennsylvania, 49 to 42 percent among likely voters. He leads in Florida, 47 to

In an analysis of interviews conducted yesterday, including in Arizona (where a poll is ongoing), there was modest evidence of a shift in Joe Biden's direction after Trump's COVID diagnosis. That said, one day of interviews is not nearly enough to reach any firm conclusions

The shift, though, would be material if confirmed and it was statistically significant, controlling for the demographic and political variables used in weighting. That said, it's still just one day of interviews. We'll have to wait and see here.

Of the two results, the biggest surprise was probably Florida, where we found Biden+5 with a R+4 sample. This is a fully updated voter file that reflects some meaningful GOP registration gains in the states.

It's just a subsample, so big MoEs here, but we found no evidence of the big Trump gains among Hispanic voters in Florida or in Miami-Dade County. Biden even narrowly led a (very small) sample of Cuban voters; they were R 47-28 by registration. Again, small samples but...
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Nate Cohn
Nate Cohn
@Nate_Cohn
A lot for Democrats to like in the early voting data over the last few days, as they are now running ahead of where they stood at a similar point of the general election--thanks to a stronger Black turnout


The Black share of in-person early voters was basically identical to the general election over the first few days of voting, but that began to diverge late last week--and even more so over the weekend, which is typically a strong period for Black turnout in Georgia


As most of you know, the Black turnout in Georgia (and nationwide) was relatively weak v. other groups in the general election. That's been a matter of some consternation for progressives who wish it weren't so, but it's also the big source of upside for Democrats in this runoff

At the moment, the higher Black share of in person early voting is enough to cancel out the smaller share of mail-in absentee voters, who were overwhelmingly Democratic in the general--giving Democrats, in my view, a slightly more favorable electorate at this stage of voting

Looking ahead, we're about to lose a certain amount of clarity in our day-by-day comparison, since the holidays will dampen (and outright eliminate) turnout on GOP-friendly days. We'll probably watch the Dems expand their lead v. the general, and then the GOP try and claw it back
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Nate Cohn
Nate Cohn
@Nate_Cohn
Georgia early voting took a few days off over the holidays, like most everything else, but it was back near general election levels on Monday


As we've expected from the start, this creates a challenge for comparing where we stand now v. the general election.
Day 11-13 were fairly good days for the GOP in Oct.; they run farther behind without those days, but we have no reason to think that's for a meaningful reason

I'll offer two ways of trying to account for this. It's not perfect, but there are many circumstances in which it still permits useful analysis. 1) Remove those same days of in-person voting (not mail) from the advanced vote in October; 2) A direct day-to-day comparison

That first comparison--removing ipev from GE holiday-equiv. --will be represented with a dotted line, shown here.
This isn't perfect: one could imagine, for ex., that someone who would have voted on day 12 will now vote on day 18, boosting later tallies. But still useful context


With that in mind, it still seems Democrats continue to show a lot of strength. Yesterday, they continued to run well ahead of the general election, including excluding holiday equiv. days
POLITICS
Nate Cohn
Nate Cohn
@Nate_Cohn
One question I keep getting about the Georgia early voting is about age: isn't the electorate older, and how much does it hurt the Democrats?
So far the answer is 'not really' and 'not at all.'

The first question is easy enough. As of today, youth turnout is basically keeping pace with the general, controlling for the slightly reduced opportunities to vote. This augurs for an unusually young


The second question is more interesting: are the Democrats hurt by lower youth turnout? So far the answer is no, and there are two reasons.
One reason: there's not a *huge* gen. gap. Maybe young voters are D+20 while >65 are R+15. You need a big gap for modest changes to matter.

The second reason is maybe more interesting: the young voters who have voted are just a lot more Democratic than the young voters who turned out at this stage of the general election

By party primary vote history, the 18-29 year olds who have voted so far are D 38, R 12. They were D 33, R 14 in the general at this stage.
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2/ put the responsibility in a difficult situation like that. Article I, Section II of the of Constitution puts that responsibility right here, in the legislatures of the several states. You are responsible for the selection of the electors. Not the Governor. Not your Secretary

3/ of State, who is covering up everything that he can cover-up. Not anybody else, but you. It's your power. It doesn't come from the state constitution. It comes from the United States Constitution. You are not subjected to needing a special session. The governor has no right,

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