The 21 places that will decide the election
My NYT essay + interactive, the polls tighten, 538 looks at Wisconsin and Georgia, polling error goes both ways, YouGov's models, a Polymarket investigation, the red-pilling of Silicon Valley
No. 335 | October 18th, 2024
🇺🇲 2024
My new guest essay for The New York Times looks at the 21 microcommunities across the four battleground states that could decide the election.
Readers of this newsletter may recognize these from my pieces on battleground political geography over the last year. And the superstar NYT graphics team of Quoctrung Bui and Aileen Clark made it come alive with maps (some in 3D!) and photos from these places. I’m really excited by how this turned out!
A second week of tightening in the polls:
Silver Bulletin: Harris +2.8 (T+0.2)
538: Harris +2.3 (T+0.1)
NYT Upshot: Harris +2.0 (T+1)
The Hill/DDHQ: Harris +2.8 (T+0.1)
RCP: Harris +1.6 (T+0.2)
Cook Political: Harris +2.0 (T+0.2)
VoteHub: Harris +2.5 (T+0.8)
RacetotheWH: Harris +3.0 (no change)
Average of the Averages: Harris +2.4 (T+0.3)
538 has its own look at battleground political geography, with a piece on Wisconsin…
…and Georgia.
The latest NYT/Siena polls make clear something that people have missed going all-the-way back to 2016: Trump’s plain speaking on issues like immigration and crime doesn’t offend minority voters, many of whom say his rhetoric is not about them. Their views on issues like crime and immigration are in line with Trump’s:
Around 40 percent of Black voters and 43 percent of Hispanic voters say they support building a wall along the Southern border. Similarly, 45 percent of Hispanic voters and 41 percent of Black voters say they support deporting undocumented immigrants.
Half of Hispanic voters and nearly half — 47 percent — of Black voters say that crime in big cities is a major problem that’s gotten out of control. That’s essentially the same as the share of white voters (50 percent) who say the same.
A chart to keep handy as early voting gets underway: most Republicans say they’ll vote on Election Day or early-in-person, while Democrats are much more likely to vote by absentee ballot. That means the potential once again for red or blue mirages on election night depending on when absentee ballots are counted.
There’s a huge split among pollsters about where young men stand in this election, but what’s definitely true is that the youth gender gap is only growing.
And the gender gap by education is similarly massive.
Non-college Latino voters are less predictable across the board in who they’ll vote, but Latino voters are definitely lining up according to their ideological preferences, according to Carlos Odio. (That shows the opportunity for realignment, btw, there are more conservative Latinos voting for Harris than liberal ones voting Trump.)
YouGov is out with their projection model, with Harris at 50% of the popular vote and Trump at 47%.
And they’ve brought the MRP system they pioneered in the UK, with an MRP-based House and Senate model that gives a slight edge to Democrats in the lower chamber and Republicans in the upper chamber.
The streams have crossed in Nate Silver’s model for the fourth time.
What’s up with prediction markets? An investigation into the “whale” who may be bidding up Trump’s price on Polymarket.
NYT discusses polling misses in past elections. They don’t all go in the same direction!
Echelon has been accused of being a “zone-flooder”, but Silver Bulletin finds us innocent.
“Republican-leaning firms have released a lot of polls this cycle. Rosenberg lists 27 Republican-aligned pollsters. Some are clearly pulling for Trump — Rasmussen Reports is credibly alleged to be giving the Trump campaign previews of its results, for example, something that no nonpartisan pollster should ever do. But other alleged zone-flooders, like Echelon Insights, are high-quality polling firms that get good marks in both the Silver Bulletin and 538 pollster ratings.”
🗣️ Public Opinion
Men's partisanship may affect the way they view their masculinity.
Republicans are now just as likely to trust information on social media sites as mainstream national news.
A second bit from Carlos Odio: Bad Bunny’s fav/unfav among Latinos across the battleground.
🗺️ Data Visualization
The red-pilling of Silicon Valley is actually a thing.