Here's why THEY are wrong

Previously, I explained why I didn't believe my own filtering of the REalClearPolitics (RCP) average of polls and why I am inclined to think president Trump will win, despite the polling evidence.  It's a stretch for me, I know.  I'm an evidence guy.  I'm a data guy.  Yet I don't agree with the evidence I've collected. So in the spirit of self-checking and to dispel any sort of confirmation bias on my part, I thought I'd run an experiment of sorts.  Or rather just do some checking.  I took a look at the RCP polls for 2016 Trump vs. Clinton and compare it to 2020 Trump vs. Biden.  I specifically drilled down on Pennsylvania as a battleground state.  More specifically, I looked at the polls and compared August vs August.  Here's what I found.

The results are remarkably similar in both election years.  Consider - Trump did not lead in either state in either year, in any poll.  But in 2016 Trump defeated  Hillary Clinton in Pennsylvania.  Famously so.  If you compare the 6 polls from 2016 to the 6 from 2018, Clinton was ahead of Trump by a combined +42.  Biden is ahead by +33. If you remove the meaningless Registered Voter (RV) polls, Clinton was ahead by +31, Biden only by +26.  In other words, Biden is under-performing Hillary Clinton at the same time period (August) in the election cycle.

Some might argue that pollsters have gotten smarter and are polling better than in 2016.  Show me proof after the election.  Right now there is no evidence to support that claim.  

In fact, when you look at individual pollsters who polled both 2016 and 2018, CBS News/YouGov has Clinton +8, Biden +6.  He's under-performed. Franklin and Marshall had both Clinton and Biden +7.  They've even got a lower margin of error in 2020, so Biden is doing better right?  No, because in 2020 they polled Registered Voters instead of Likely Voters like they did in 2016. Why is that?  Registered Voters always favor Democrats versus Likely Voter polls, and they are always less accurate.  The only pollster in 2020 that has good news for Biden is Emerson.  Emerson has Biden +9 and it only had Clinton +3.  Interestingly in this case, Emerson showed the lowest spread of Clinton over Trump and shows the largest spread of Biden over Trump.  Is it a perennial outlier or the one pollster we can say is an apples-to-apples comparison?  There's no evidence it's the latter without investigating the cross tabs (which I have not yet done).

Evidence, though only circumstantial, would indicate that the pollsters showing a Clinton lead and a Biden lead could be suffering from the same innate bias.  Trump beat Clinton despite the polls (in August anyway), and the same is quite potentially true in 2020.  And Biden is under-performing Clinton at the same point in the race.  The directional indication thus is Trump beat Clinton in Pennsylvania, despite trailing in August.  He trails Biden by less than he trailed Clinton in August.  Therefore it's possible he will defeat Biden by more than he defeated Clinton in Pennsylvania.  That's not an impossible trail of breadcrumbs to follow. 

Now time for the glass half empty view.  In the polls the gap between Trump and Clinton appear to be due to her own ceiling.  Remember, she was not a likable candidate.  Biden, while oafish, is more likable than Hillary was.  Trump's numbers have come up vs. 2016 but Biden has a higher polling average than Hillary did.  It seems he has a higher top end.  The Emerson poll is an interesting example.  Trump scored a 43% in both 2016 and 2020 but whereas Clinton got 46% in the pol, Biden got 52% support.

I eye that even with suspicion.  It is possible that a pollster could (NOT would) hold an option static and then smooth out the results based on that.  In other words, they could have held Trump at 43% and then took the remainder of voters and got fewer not sure/uncommitted and more Biden support.  I don't think they did that.  It's more plausible that Biden is more likable than Hillary was.  That does not translate to more votes in November though.

I'll leave it with one last thought.  The final RCP average in 2016 had Clinton +2.1%, Trump won by 0.7%.  The only two polls that had Trump competitive in the final days of early November were Trafalgar Group (Trump +1) and Harper (Tie).  Most of the pollsters (excluding the RV polls) had Clinton +2.  Morning Call had Clinton +6.  Monmouth had Clinton +4.  Not included in the RCP average but still final week polls, were CNN (Clinton +5), Quinnipiac (Clinton +6) and Franklin and Marshall (Clinton +11).  Remember: The only poll that matters is election day (plus all the monitored mail in voting but that's a story for another day).

Confirmation Bias

Part of the polarization of America, either as a symptom or a cause, confirmation bias is an existential condition in all things politic today.  Simply put, people tend to fit evidence into one of two boxes: real news or data that supports their beliefs OR fake/untrustworthy news, that can be discarded or ignored.  I've been guilty of it at times, it's hard to avoid doing it, but we need to try.  Below are  two recent examples of both Democrat and Republican confirmation bias.

Firstly a Democrat excitedly celebrating the fact that the Republicans are going to lose the senate (note this is not the consensus among the well known analysts like Politico, Sabato, Cook or Inside Elections) based primarily on a flimsy approve/disapprove for incumbents:

This is confirmation bias used as an extrapolation.  Not only is the Morning Consult polling questionable in my view (I know, that could be confirmation bias) but it is a single view.  More importantly approval/disapproval is not a 1-1 mapping with electability. Anyone who puts some of those red states as Democrat pickups is clearly guilty of wishful thinking.  That's not to say some of the races might not be close, but remember Beto O'Rourke beating Ted Cruz? Me neither.

Next NewsMax interviewing Roger Stone contains the suggestion that Nancy Pelosi's House leader position is in trouble:

I'd like to believe Roger Stone is right, but looking at the congressional map, while I think the Republicans are going to pick up seats, regaining control is not a done deal.  In fact it is going to be difficult (though possible).  While Roger Stone might end up being correct, and I hope he is, it's a bit of wishful thinking at this point to suggest that this is an obvious outcome.

The ONLY thing that is certain at this point is that confirmation bias is definitely an existential part of the political polarization in the country.

Right direction means re-election

Are the midterms going to hurt Republicans?  A lot of incumbent Republicans, and of course all Democrats seem to think so, but I'm not convinced.  I don't see a blue wave at this point.  I may be guilty of confirmation bias but in my opinion everyone predicting a blue wave are guilty of the same confirmation bias they exhibited in 2016 regarding president Trump in the primaries and then again in the general election. Besides which, even though it's already April, an awful lot could happen between now and the midterms in November.

There's more to it than that.  I looked at Rasmussen's survey of whether the country is going in the right direction or wrong direction, going back to 2010 - that's an eight year window.  This could be where you argue my confirmation bias comes in, but I'll address that in a moment.

There is a definite change in Rasmussen's survey results as you can see in the chart I've created below, and it's particularly visible since November of 2017, when president Trump won the election.

Detractors could accuse me of exhibiting confirmation bias by using Rasmussen, which is generally regarded as a conservative pollster.  Except that they appear to have used the same methodology in the survey as far as I can see. And Rasmussen does not interview only Republicans. Any bias Rasmussen exhibits is inherent in the data and reflected across time. You can argue the scope of the bias by the relative weighting of Republicans, Democrats and  Independents being surveyed. But if the numbers are relatively consistent (or consistent with other measures that Rasmussen employs to determine the ratio of those groups) then the bias is limited to the original error and consistent across time eight years' worth of time). Therefore the uptick is real because within his survey, consistent in methodology, there is indeed a Trump uptick.  

That said, the uptick could represent two different things; (1) people generally feeling things are getting better, to some varying degrees, across the political spectrum or (2) conservatives or Republicans becoming more positive, and Democrats becoming less positive but not enough to offset Republican (and perhaps Independents as well) growing enthusiasm.   Either way that does not point to a blue wave.

There could still be a blue wave, and indeed Republicans should ALWAYS operate under that assumption in order to prevent it.  But so far the evidence put forth to validate the conjecture is not convincing.  Whether many Republicans deserve re-election is another issue, but the uptick means many voters seem willing to at least overlook their recent 'transgressions', and or president Trump's.

Duelling Echo Chambers

If you look at the 2016 election you can find pundits, pollsters and the general public who predict everything from a Hillary Clinton blowout to a Donald Trump blow out (and everything in between). 

People on the right, many of them, believe that the polls have oversampled Democrats.  That the turnout of Democrats is going to be depressed among African American voters, Bernie Sanders supporters and even to a certain extent Hispanic voters are unenthusiastic and won't turn out in numbers to get Hillary Clinton elected.  Meanwhile, Trump has surged among men, blue collar workers, and a number of other traditional Democrat demographics.  In addition, they cite things like the pollster misreads of BREXIT, where the Stay vote was expected to beat the Leave vote and it has not happened.

There are polls that support many of their assertions.  There's evidence pollsters were re-working their polls and support was converging between Trump and Clinton prior to the initial Comey news that the FBI were re-opening the Clinton email investigation (before slamming it shut again today).  But here's the thing - you can't say the pollsters were adjusting their polls AND that Trump was surging.  It's one or the other.  Additionally, there were a number of polls that showed Romney leading Obama in 2012 that turned out to be wrong.  The preponderance of the evidence of polls was that Obama was leading and he actually was.

While there is a case to be made that Trump has made up ground and that there is this mythical Trump "monster vote" that will emerge on election day.  Okay, maybe but there's no solid evidence.  As much as I'd like to believe it and I've based a lot of my own analyses on skepticism of the mainstream polls, we might be operating in an echo chamber - we hear people saying things, often anecdotally, that we are predisposed to want to believe and hence exhibit a confirmation bias belief in that 'news'.

The same can be said for Democrats, who want to believe the polling general Clinton lead.  They dismiss the anecdotal evidence of huge Trump rallies and small Clinton rallies as forcefully as Trump supporters embrace them.  The Democrat echo chamber has been around a lot longer (and consequently a lot bigger) but that makes it no more correct.

What matters is a preponderance of polls in the swing states. If there's a hidden Trump monster vote, or true unmeasured momentum for him, I'll be as happy as anyone - Hillary Clinton is unfit to be president. Trump is a coin toss at least. But until that happens, I am dialing myself back on my confidence levels.  I think at this point the ceiling for Hillary Clinton is probably about 280 electoral college votes and the floor is about 225. The same is roughly true for Trump. I think Trump's chances of winning are anywhere from 45% to 53%  That's not terrible odds (unless you are Hillary Clinton and are working to stack the deck in your favor).  As a Trump proponent, I'll take that. A Trump landslide would be wonderful, but it's not necessary.

Trump conflation

Trump supporter might be worried about the polls, even if they are closing a bit of late.  Then again, they might not be worried, seeing the polls as misleading. Many of us did that erroneously in 2012, and Trump supporters should be warned by that head-in-the-sand-aided-by-confirmation-bias world view. One of the things I worry about is the notion of attendance.  Trump supporters and indeed Trump himself are conflating two different notions.  They argue that the polls are wrong and Trump is winning and the proof is that he's getting thousands of attendees at his rallies and Hillary Clinton is getting hundreds or even dozens.  There are a couple of problems with that idea.

Firstly, and no less importantly, just like Clinton is avoiding press conferences and is being handled with exacting standards, I suspect her approach in facing Trump is that less is more.  She's avoiding big crowds and longer appearances in the hopes of avoiding a slip-up (which she is clearly prone to make).  The smaller crowds might be by design.

Secondly, when looking at the size of a crowd, what we really are trying to guage is the depth of support, not the breadth of support.  How many supporters a candidate have is the bailiwick of pollsters. How engaged those supporters are, is measured by turnout to a rally.  Trump's supporters are truly energized, but it does not mean there are more of them than Hillary supporters.

As an adjunct to that latter point, engagement still needs to translate to action to be useful.  Are Trump supporters organizing themselves and going door-to-door to promote Trump?  There's no evidence of that, at least in the news.  

All that not to say that Trump supporters are mixing up rally attendance with the truer picture provided by the polls.  Polls can be wildly erroneous if constructed incorrectly. And Obama had massive rallies too in 2008, so it's not meaningless.  But conflating enthusiasm with numbers (support ten feed wide but a mile deep) is a mistake Trump supporters and more importantly Donald Trump and his team are advised not to make.

Donald Trump did NOT suggest 2nd Amendment voters assassinate Hillary Clinton

This is beyond ridiculous and it shows how far the media and Clinton voters will go to twist the truth or distort the obvious in order to steer the election to Hillary Clinton.

If you are a second amendment supporter you know that it meant to get out and vote in numbers to stop Hillary Clinton from winning the presidency.  That's how I took it.

Look at the sentence that precedes it - if she gets elected and gets to appoint judges there's nothing you can do.  Well, yes there is - make sure she doesn't get elected.  The second amendment comment was to single out that voting block.

If you are a Clinton supporter, stop lying to yourself and others. At a minimum you are guilty of a confirmation bias.  I'm sure you assume Trump is so beatable that any other Trump pronouncement should be enough to tank his chances of winning.  If you need to lie to win, look in the damn mirror and ask yourself who you are as a person.

Saturday Learning Series - Confirmation Bias and the Evolution of Reason

The video this week looks at a particular approach to understanding cognitive biases like confirmation bias. It's from Kevin. deLaplante of The Critical Thinking Academy.  He's provided some good videos on different types of invalid arguments that I've linked to in the previous Saturday Learning Series posts.



NEXT WEEK:  Back to the Yale course on economics.