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Decent results for @joebiden. The screens and points of emphasis in the questions are pretty GOP favorable and yet Biden is ahead in all 4 states and Trump can't get out of the low 40s. https://twitter.com/Nate_Cohn/status/1304754901902340102
Voter sample in NV/MN tilted towards Trump '16 voters even though HRC won both states despite third parties getting more than 6% of the vote. WI is tilted to Trump voters by +6. HRC lost it by less than 1%. Party ID in NH is GOP +2. Actual Reg is D+2.
The WI poll is about as Trumpy as you can get, bordering on a push poll. Law & Order is not that high a priority. Yet, 19 of 34 Qs on the WI poll are straight out of the Trump framing on 'law & order' and racial makeup of the suburbs (what?!). No Qs on #suckersandlosers/Woodward.
Despite all that, Biden is +2 among whites in this pol and +14 among Indies. HRC was -11 and -10. Do the math. Biden's gonna win WI if he's ahead like that in a sample this Trumpy. There are like 18,000 other polls in WI so average it.
One other issue is philosophical. Pollsters think the '16 exit polls got it wrong on makeup of non col v col ed whites. This survey has 54% non col white/31% col ed whites. 2016 exit polls were at 47%/39. This year should be narrower than the '16 baseline no matter one's view.
I think exit polls were right. It wasn't just non college voters that shifted to Trump/3rd party post-Comey. College whites did too. Respondents to post-mortem surveys are more likely to have lied about voting for Trump after the fact than on or before e-day '16.
The NV poll is a little closer to what I expected. You can add 2-3 points for Dems on any public poll on NV to get the actual number. The thing that stands out is Biden leads among older voters by 20. HRC won that demo by 5. Poll shortchanges Biden a bit on 30-44 voters (+2).
The white non-coll/coll is not as skewed here, 36% white non coll/24% white coll. '16 exit polls had it as 33/29. It's still a key difference as JB leads by 18 among college ed whites and -31 among non Coll whites. (HRC lost white coll by 8 and non coll whites by 24).
Biden leads by 5 among Indies. HRC lost Indies by 13 in NV. Biden starts at a higher baseline than did HRC. Biden is probably up +6/+7.
In NH, Biden leads college whites 65-29 and is down -14 to non college whites. Also gets 12% of GOPs. Sample has them splitting Indies. Biden leads older voters by 10. Sample has non college whites as 52%. Exit polls had it at 41%.
Biden is probably ahead in NH by a more points than just 3 given campaign activity and ads etc and these internals. The issue is really the composition of the electorate. MN has Biden +9 which matches other polls despite a pretty Trumpy sample.
Trump's path to make these states competitive is to make 50-64 voters and non-college ed white voters a dominant share of the electorate (a lot of overlap btwn the 2 demos). Yet, Biden leads among whites overall in these surveys despite some favorable screens.
Biden's task to win these states decisively is to improve his share of 30-44 voters (seems low in these polls) relative to nat'l & other state polls + to keep the margin in the 45-64 demo narrow. That means driving up the nonwhite and coll ed white share of the total electorate.
