Biden maintains a lead in Wisconsin and Trump's three best pick-up opportunities, among likely voters
MN: Biden 50, Trump 41
NH: Biden 45, Trump 42
NV: Biden 46, Trump 42
WI: Biden 48, Trump 43 https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/12/us/politics/biden-trump-poll-wisconsin-minnesota.html

The polls suggest that a lot of the Trump law and order pivot succeeded... but with a big catch.
--Voters split on whether law and order > COVID to their vote
--They say Biden *supports* defunding the police
--They say Biden hasn't done enough to condemn violent riots, by a lot

The big catch: despite all of that, Trump still doesn't really even lead on average on law and order or violent crime. That's probably in part because they think Biden's better at unifying the country, handling protests, and think Trump encourages violence

Taken together, Biden's up 6 across the four states--which were about 1.2 points right of the country in '16. So I'd say it's basically in line with the national polling, which currently shows Biden ~ +7.5

State by state, MN/WI/NV were all within 1 or 2 points of what I would have guessed at the outset. NH is quite a bit better for Trump than I would have guessed, and there are three main possibilities worth considering

One is that it's just right, and NH is tougher than assumed. It's hard to say, given the absence of serious polling there. I'd note the last poll was Biden+8... but wasn't weighted by education. This poll would have shown Biden+7 without education weights

Another possibility is that it's noise. This is a small sample at N=450, and there's no way around losing precision at that point, even though we have decent party variables. Maybe if we polled it again, the exact same way today, we'd show a number that came closer to our prior.

The third possibility is that it's not noise, exactly, but a reflection of some real difficulties. As I said last night, we really struggled there; the voter file was surprisingly bad. And it's our first time polling there--the last top battleground where we've never done a poll

I'm reminded of our Michigan poll last October, where we had some similar challenges on our first swing through, without the benefit of knowing just how the file would play out. It's possible that a more tailored design would yield better results than the default approach

As an aside, NH is Trump's worst state by recalled 2016 vote choice--it's a Clinton/Trump tie there, like IRL. Another reminder that this metric may not be as clear of a way to judge whether a poll is 'good' or 'bad' for a candidate as you might assume.

Only 6% are undecided across the four states, on average, the rest who aren't supporting a major party candidate say they're voting for a listed minor party candidate or said someone else/won't vote. https://twitter.com/lynchianreality/status/1304757265463992321?s=20

NH primary was on Tuesday, the day we went into the field. Would have done it otherwise. https://twitter.com/byelin/status/1304763869206925312?s=20

As an aside, we had Smith+9 in MN -- the same as the presidential race, but with big underlying, regional differences. Biden better in the MSP metro; Smith running better in rural areas. A bit of downballot reversion to something more like the traditional MN map, as is typical

Yeah, I think there are actually two flips there. MIL city v burbs; North v. East. Thanks for pointing out; will try nd correct. https://twitter.com/JustForReading9/status/1304759856050601984?s=20

If you prefer to see it right rather than do the flips in your head (1 is biden; 2 trump)