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Tuesday, August 18, 2020

Recent Polling And What It Shows

 The "experts" and the pundits are busy analyzing the election polls.  As you would expect, the expert analysis depends more on what party the expert supports than on what the numbers show.  There are two trends in recent polling, though, that are clear.

The first trend is that the pick of Kamala Harris by Biden was a dud.  Biden chose Harris ten days ago.  Normally, the selection of a VP gives a surge of coverage and a bounce in the polls.  Even VP picks like Sarah Palin who ultimately hurt their ticket give an initial boost.  Harris provided no boost at all to the Biden numbers.  In fact, Biden's numbers got weaker after he chose Harris.

The decline in Biden's numbers is the second trend of late.  There is a discernible narrowing of Biden's lead in the nation polls as well as in many state polls.  No, Trump has not pulled away.  Nor has support of Biden collapsed.  There is, however, a trend that is showing.  Indeed, if one averages all of the battleground state polls one finds that Trump is running better in 2020 at this point than he did in 2016 against Hillary.  That improvement in 2020 is just about 1%.

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