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

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...

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

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

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

1. @SidneyPowell1, @LLinWood and any others who are digging into 2020 election fraud, you might want to look at Ryan Macias. He's the former acting director of the Federal Election Assistance Commission. He tested and certified Dominion systems, then profited from their failure.

I was working on something before the election that became the election...

Color revolutions are real and we just witnessed one live and direct...

1.

Alright, I'm going to explain this one more time because I keep getting tweets like "people who vote for politicians who let them die of hypothermia deserve to die of hypothermia."

The people who voted red in Texas are, by and large, relatively fine right now. Yes, the storm has hurt them but the storm was going to hurt everyone.

But. They're either rich enough that *their* power wasn't cut off or rural enough that they have fireplaces and wood and wells.

Those millions without power are in places like Dallas county and Tarrant county and Harris county, I.e., the urban places that have the highest concentration of blue voters.

So it's not "(all/most) people voted for hypothermia and now they will fittingly die of hypothermia".

It's "(certain) people voted for the folks in cities to die of hypothermia, and they are, while the aforementioned voters are safe and dry and relatively comfortable."

Well, gosh, why don't those voters *do something* rather than passively being killed??

Do you know how many people live in Harris county? 4 million. Do you know how many ballot drop-off boxes they were allocated last election? 1.

1 box for 4 million people.

At my office in Congress I have an original ballot of Mandela’s election as reminder to never take democracy for granted. After yesterday’s senate vote, I turn back to Mandela’s first speech when released from prison 31 years ago this week. Here’s what we can learn (THREAD)

GRACE: “I greet you all in the name of peace, democracy and freedom for all.”

Robbed of 27 years of his life, no one would have faulted Mandela if he emerged from prison with anger. But instead, with his first words of his first speech in decades, he chose grace. 2/13

HUMILITY: “I stand before you not as a prophet but as a humble servant of you, the people.”

Mandela was revered by millions as a leader of conscience. But in his second sentence, he made sure to set the tone for humility and service. No individuals stand above the people. 3/13

SOLIDARITY: “I salute the working class...religious communities..the endless heroism of youth.. the mothers and wives and sisters of our nation”

He focused on the contributions of the many and showed respect to those often overlooked. He showed the vitalness of coalitions. 4/13

URGENCY: “Our struggle has reached a decisive moment.”

Mandela used the speech to set the tone for the work ahead. His release was not the climax, but instead just the possibility of change. No assumptions could be made of what comes next. 5/13