North Carolina and Georgia, you’re not done yet!
The Presidential race is resolved: …however, y’all are not done yet in the South! The importance of the election for redistricting is s...
The Senate polling desert
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.
Topics:
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.