Plenty of polls for the Presidency – but there’s a polling desert in all-important Senate races. How does this affect your activism? There are two places where you can hedge your efforts, either by preventing gerrymandering for a decade or by influencing the Presidential race.
This table shows the number of polls in top Senate races in 2016 and 2020. The first two columns use toss-up races as defined by RealClearPolitics. Indiana is excluded because state law there requires polls to be done by live-caller only. The last column shows our top voter-power states.
As you can see, polling dropped off a cliff in mid-September. I don’t know why – maybe attention on the Presidential race. Or maybe the tough financial position of newsrooms today.
There’s one place where your efforts help both a key Senate race and also help fight partisan gerrymandering: Johnson County, Kansas. Any votes turned out there also affect the Senate race.
Another possibility is Alaska, where – if the Presidential race is tighter than polls indicate – the per-voter power of Trump/Biden supporters is unusually high. In that case, give to the Senate race of Al Gross (D/I) against incumbent Dan Sullivan (R).
The Kansas and Alaska organizations are featured in the right ActBlue sidebar for Democrats. Corresponding Republicans are listed in the WinRed.
It looks like we are finally getting some of the longed-for polls of underpolled Senate races – and more are hopefully right around the corner.
However, I cannot help but notice that PEC’s meta-margin for the House has fallen to a mere 2 %, from a high of 6.8 %.
Is this a reason for concern? Could this be a harbinger of more general Republican gains? Or am I overly alarmed?
Low N I think, only 3 polls. Dominated by Dornsife. Could be true, not sure. Senate data will probably be clarifying.
Does the possible over-performance among white non-college and under-performance among non-white voters by Biden have implications for the electoral college Republican/Trump lean?
Apparently not yet, since the gap is still 2-3 points, similar to 2016.