Nate Cohn: Biden leads by margin similar to nat'l polls across the 6 closest states Trump won

[highplainsdem]

Actually, the NYT's Nate Cohn said "nearly identical" instead of "similar" but I couldn't fit that into the thread title.


Cohn's Twitter thread starts here, with full text below:

Link to tweet

Biden leads by a margin nearly identical to national polls across the six closest states carried by the president.
Biden 27
Warren 19
Sanders 16
He leads in Fla, Mich, Penn, Ariz and NC, but trails Warren in Wisc
@jmartNYT/@katieglueck with the story >>
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/08/us/politics/democrats-poll-moderates-battleground.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage


Unlike the national polls (and many state polls), we surveyed the relevant Democratic primary universe in these states (reg. Dems in AZ/PA/FL, anyone who wants in WI/MI, reg. Dems + una in NC)
More undecided in closed states, but otherwise doesn't seem like it made a difference


If I had to guess, I'd say the 'closed' states should be better for Biden, since that yields an older and less educated electorate. But it's hard to see much evidence for it here


I would say the same thing about the demographics of these states. They're less educated than the country, which might have been a drag on Warren. OTOH they're a little whiter; maybe cancels it out.
All in all, doesn't seem like a hugely different story here than the USA

One of the people replying to Cohn objected to the narrative that moderates were preferred, and he seems here to be suggesting that if you combine Warren and Sanders supporters they'd outnumber Biden and Buttigieg supporters.

Link to tweet

Nate, if you’re going to lean hard into the “moderate v liberal” frame, why do you fail to reconcile that the top libs (Warren and Bernie) beat the top moderates (Biden and Pete) in 4 of the 6 states? Doesn’t seem like your frame works when applied to actual candidate support.

Cohn's response, in two tweets starting here:

Link to tweet

well you'll have to ask the people who wrote the piece and adopted the frame.
but looking at the data, the major explanatory factor is that the undecided voters are likeliest to be moderate/prefer moderates, etc.


just 11% of very liberal Dems are undecided, v. 32% of mod/conservative Dems, etc.

I wanted to include those last two tweets from Cohn because it's important that there's a much larger reserve of undecided moderate Dems who'd likely choose to vote for Biden than there is a reserve of undecided liberals who'd likely vote for Warren or Sanders. Think of those undecided voters as the late-reporting counties in elections where you know how they lean and how many votes there are but don't have the results yet, and you can see how that reserve could greatly increase Biden's lead when people finally vote in the primary.

[Thekaspervote]

1. He's maintaining a steady durable lead!!

[Scurrilous]

2. K&R

[Cha]

3. That makes sense since they are Swing States..

Steady On Joe Biden!

Mahalo, hpd !

[Gothmog]

4. From Nate Silver

Link to tweet