Samuel Minter – Page 8 – Election Graphs

Blue Virginia

Since last week's update, there was only one new poll released, a University of Mary Washington poll of Virginia.

They polled Biden, Sanders, Warren, and Harris against Trump. No new data for Buttigieg or O'Rourke.

This poll was the first public polling of Virginia this cycle. The only glimpse we had previously was leaked Trump internal polling from March which only included Biden.

Virginia has been trending blue over the last few elections, but Election Graphs starts with the average of the previous five elections before we have polls and the average margin from 2000 to 2016 ended up as a 0.1% Republican lead.

The leaked Biden vs. Trump poll moved the state from Weak Trump (by 0.1%) to Weak Biden (by 4.9%) in the Election Graphs average, but with no 2020 data, all the other Democrats remained in "Weak Trump" territory despite the general sense that because of the trends in Virginia, this was unlikely to stay the case.

At long last, we have a new public poll of Virginia though. So we start to see how the state looks for 2020.

All four Democratic candidates led Trump by double digits in this new poll. The poll averages still include some older election results though, since this is the first 2020 polling in Virginia for every matchup except Biden vs. Trump.

In terms of categories, this moved the state from "Weak Trump" to "Weak Democratic" for Sanders, Warren, and Harris.

Biden, having already taken the lead after that leaked Trump internal poll, now moves from "Weak Biden" to "Strong Biden."

In terms of odds of winning, that means that every Democrat that has been polled in Virginia so far is estimated to have an 80%+ chance of winning the state according to the historical accuracy of Election Graphs poll averages.

As usual, I must repeat the universal caveat on this site: These numbers are if the election was today. The election is not today, a lot will change between now and then.

Also, in this case, we still have sparse polling.

So, what does the national picture look like now in terms of the chance of the Democrat winning?

Dem	22 Sep	29 Sep	𝚫
Biden	99.9%	99.9%	Flat
Sanders	95.3%	97.2%	+1.9%
O'Rourke	83.1%	83.1%	Flat
Warren	62.4%	69.7%	+7.3%
Buttigieg	66.5%	66.5%	Flat
Harris	54.7%	64.0%	+10.7%

It is hard for Biden to improve his position much given where he is, but the movement of Virginia in the blue direction helps the other three Democrats with poll results, with the most significant boost going to Harris.

And that is all for this week.

400.9 days until polls start to close.

For more information:

This post is an update based on the data on the Election Graphs Electoral College 2020 page. Election Graphs tracks a poll-based estimate of the Electoral College. The charts, graphs, and maps in the post above are all as of the time of this post. Click through on any image to go to a page with the current interactive versions of that chart, along with additional details.

Follow @ElectionGraphs on Twitter or Election Graphs on Facebook to see announcements of updates. For those interested in individual poll updates, follow @ElecCollPolls on Twitter for all the polls as I add them. If you find the information in these posts informative or useful, please consider visiting the donation page.

Another Mixed Week for Dems

Since last week's update, there has been new polling released in Arizona (x2), Colorado, Kentucky, Maine, North Carolina, California (x2), Florida, Texas, and Missouri.

Once again we have mixed results.

Two of the six most polled Democrats (Biden and O'Rourke) improve their positions in the probabilistic view when you combine the results of all of those polls.

The other four (Sanders, Buttigieg, Warren, and Harris) slip in their matchups against Trump. Some weaken significantly.

So let's start with the national "Odds of a Democratic Win" view:

Dem	15 Sep	22 Sep	𝚫
Biden	99.8%	99.9%	+0.1%
Sanders	96.9%	95.3%	-1.6%
O'Rourke	80.8%	83.1%	+2.3%
Buttigieg	67.0%	66.5%	-0.5%
Warren	69.0%	62.4%	-6.6%
Harris	65.7%	54.7%	-11.0%

The two that stand out here are Warren and Harris. The new polls this week hurt their win chances significantly. Harris is now looking only slightly better off than a coin toss in a race against Trump.

We'll look at each state to determine where these changes are coming from, but first, you can also see this pattern dramatically when looking at the "Median Case" from the Monte Carlo simulations.

In this view, you can see that the winning margins of every Democratic candidate except O'Rourke have been decreasing lately. Including Biden.

A lot of the "movement" of these various lines up until now could still be attributed to actual 2020 polling replacing old elections in our state polling averages. We are getting to the point though where a lot (although not all) of the critical states are mostly 2020 polls.

So we may start seeing trends that represent real changes in public opinion. We will also begin to see what level of variability is just inherent in looking at the election this way. It may end up being "normal" that some of these lines bounce up and down quite a bit as we go along.

In the meantime though, time to look at the trends in each of the states where there was new polling over the last week. There are a lot, so I'll be brief.

California is so blue; it is mostly irrelevant to the national race. All of the Democrats have a 100% chance of winning California. It is notable though that all six candidates are doing even stronger in California than the historical average from the 2000 to 2016 elections. California is getting even bluer.

A lot of the win odds changes this week can be attributed to Texas. With the latest polling in Texas, the trend of each new poll moving the state further in the Democratic direction has ended. Biden and O'Rourke still improve slightly, but every other Democrat erodes. Along with Biden and O'Rourke, Sanders retains a lead. Warren, Harris, and Buttigieg not only lose Texas but the picture of them "making it close" is slipping. At least this week.

Florida is the other big state responsible for much of this week's changes. The only Democrats who did not weaken in Florida this week are the ones that were not in the polls. Florida has a lot of electoral votes, and Florida is close, so it has an outsized impact on the national picture.

The only mover this week in North Carolina is Biden, with his average moving to a greater than 5% lead for the first time. Trump leads all the other Democrats by narrow margins.

Arizona is another state where there is a big gap between Biden and the rest of the field. This week Biden took the lead in the Arizona poll average. Add Arizona to Texas as red states that flip, and you can see why Biden's national position remains so strong. Sanders also makes Arizona close, but all of the other Democrats are hovering around the historical average, which is a Strong Republican win.

Missouri is clear red state, and with two polls so far this cycle, it just looks like it is getting redder.

At the same time, Colorado is getting bluer. Only Biden moves the state into Strong Democrat territory so far though. The other candidates still only have narrow leads in the polling average.

Kentucky is red and not in contention for 2020. With the small amount of polling so far though, Biden still does best, actually decreasing the Republican margin slightly. Not so much for the others.

Finally Maine. Maine is blue and does not look to be changing into anything else. With the first few polls, Biden looked like he might be making it even bluer than before. But as we stand today, all of the Democrats are pretty close to the historical average for the state.

And that is where things are this week.

408.0 days until polls start to close.

For more information:

Some Dems Up, Some Dems Down

Since last week's update, there have been two new polls in Texas, and one each in New Hampshire, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania.

For the six most polled Democrats against Trump (Biden, Sanders, Warren, Buttigieg, Harris, and O'Rourke) this week saw the following category changes:

Biden vs. Trump state category change: WI has moved from Strong Biden to Weak Biden
Sanders vs. Trump state category change: MI has moved from Strong Sanders to Weak Sanders
Warren vs. Trump state category change: PA has moved from Weak Warren to Weak Trump

Looking at how this impacted the national numbers:

In the "Expected Case" where every candidate wins every state they are ahead in, Pennsylvania moving from slightly Warren to slightly Trump means that Warren now only has a 12 electoral vote margin in this scenario.

Biden's lead dropping below 5% in Wisconsin, and Sander's lead dropping below 5% in Michigan meanwhile, improves Trump's "Best Case" (where he wins not only all of the states where he is ahead but also all the ones where he is behind by less than 5%) against both candidates.

As these five states moved around, several tipping points moved as well.

Sanders vs. Trump tipping point change: Sanders by 1.3% in FL -> Sanders by 1.9% in TX
O'Rourke vs. Trump tipping point change: O'Rourke by 2.1% in TX -> O'Rourke by 1.8% in TX
Biden vs. Trump tipping point change: Biden by 4.9% in VA -> Biden by 4.6% in WI

The tipping point changes already make it clear that this was a mixed week. Some Democrats improved their positions against Trump; some moved in the opposite direction. This mix in the situation exists despite all of the actual category changes being in Trump's direction.

The movement within categories that starts to be shown by the tipping point is something we can see even better if we switch to the probabilistic simulation view:

Dem	8 Sep	15 Sep	𝚫
Biden	99.9%	99.8%	-0.1%
Sanders	95.8%	96.9%	+1.1%
O'Rourke	80.0%	80.8%	+0.8%
Warren	71.1%	69.0%	-2.1%
Buttigieg	67.1%	67.0%	-0.1%
Harris	64.3%	65.7%	+1.4%

There were a lot of mixed results in a lot of states this week. But when you balance it all out in terms of the odds of winning in the Electoral College:

Harris, Sanders, and O'Rourke strengthened against Trump
Warren, Biden, and Buttigieg weakened against Trump

Another way of looking at this is the median margins in the Monte Carlo simulations for each of the candidate combinations:

Unlike the categorization "Expected Case" view, where Harris narrowly loses to Trump, all six Democrats lead Trump in the probabilistic "Median Case."

Warren, Buttigieg, and Harris all lead by 30 or less electoral votes, though. In electoral vote terms, that is a very tight race. Any state with more than 15 electoral votes slipping to the other side of the centerline would switch the outcome.

O'Rourke, Sanders, and Biden, each, in turn, have more of a margin than the candidate before, so additional buffer. They can afford for more to go wrong before they lose.

Now, let's look at each of the five states that got polled this week.

Of the two polls in Texas, one matched other recent surveys and was mostly favorable to the Democrats. The other showed clear Republican leads.

The net impact of the two polls on the averages was that Biden, Sanders, Warren, and Harris continued improving in Texas, while Buttigieg and O'Rourke got a little weaker.

You do get one piece of oddness, though. I use the methodology I described in my Polling Error vs. Final Margin post to translate margins into odds of winning. When I use the straight-up unsmoothed numbers from the 2008 to 2016 elections, there are a few places where the relationship between the polling average and the win odds are not monotonic.

This behavior means that even though O'Rourke's polling average dropped from a 2.1% lead to a 1.8% lead, my computed "odds of winning Texas" for O'Rourke INCREASED from 66.4% to 68.2%.

Now, I could have smoothed the handful of places where this non-monotonic behavior occurs out of existence. But I chose when I first set up the odds based view to use the numbers that came straight out of my analysis of the previous election results without any further manipulation.

Given the historical data and the methodology I used, a 1.8% Democratic lead is indeed slightly more likely to win than a 2.1% Democratic lead. Of course, this does seem a little crazy and is quite possibly just an example of overfitting.

But it isn't a huge difference and occurs at only a few specific margin zones, so I'll leave it be.

We still end up with a situation where three of the six Democrats are leading in Texas though, and another two make it close.

Texas continues to be one of the most important states to watch.

Sanders improved slightly in Pennsylvania.

Biden's lead deteriorated significantly.

Warren lost her lead to Trump.

The poll did not include the others.

Biden, Sanders, and Warren all weaken against Trump in Michigan with this week's update.

The poll did not include the others.

Warren got stronger in Wisconsin.

Biden and Sanders got weaker.

The poll did not include the others.

Biden, Sanders, Warren, and Harris all got weaker in New Hampshire with the latest polling.

The poll did not include Buttigieg or O'Rourke.

And that's it for this week's update.

415.6 days until polls start to close.

For more information:

Most Democrats Weaken in Wisconsin

Since last week's update, there was only one new state-level general election poll. The addition this week was a Marquette poll of Wisconsin.

There were no category changes based on these results.

Biden and Sanders continue to have strong leads in Wisconsin (more than a 5% margin but less than a 10% margin).

Meanwhile, Warren, Buttigieg, Harris, and O'Rourke have weak leads (less than a 5% margin).

There has been some movement within the broader categories though, so let's take a look:

Marquette did not poll Buttigieg or O'Rourke, so their averages do not change.

Of the rest, only Sanders improved their Election Graphs average in Wisconsin, going from a 6.6% lead to a 6.8% lead.

Everybody else weakens.

Biden drops from a 7.2% lead to 6.4%.

Warren goes from a 3.3% lead to only 1.9%.

Harris goes from a 4.1% lead to just 1.4%.

In terms of winning odds, while every Democrat here is favored to win, we have a vast range.

Sanders is now best off with a 96.2% chance of winning Wisconsin.

Harris is weakest, with only a 62.3% chance of winning the state.

So, how does this change the national picture?

Dem	1 Sep	8 Sep	𝚫
Biden	99.9%	99.9%	Flat
Sanders	95.7%	95.8%	+0.1%
O'Rourke	80.0%	80.0%	Flat
Warren	72.6%	71.1%	-1.5%
Buttigieg	67.1%	67.1%	Flat
Harris	67.9%	64.3%	-3.6%

Even though Biden weakened a bit in Wisconsin, his overall position is strong enough that things look flat when rounding to the nearest 0.1%. But if you must know an additional digit after the decimal point, his national win chance in the Election Graphs simulation moves from about 99.89% to approximately 99.86%. But we don't deserve that additional digit. That is false precision. So it is flat.

Sanders, of course, has a small gain, while Warren and Harris both drop.

Harris is hurt the most by this week's polling and takes over from Buttigieg as the weakest of these six Democrats against Trump.

And that's it for this week.

422.0 days until polls start to close.

For more information:

Missouri, Michigan, and Utah

Since last week's update, there has been new polling in Missouri, Michigan, and Utah.

The only category change coming out of this was that in a Harris vs. Trump race Missouri moves from Strong Trump (a 5% to 10% Trump lead) to Solid Trump (a greater than 10% Trump lead).

Looking more generally, the Democrats improve their leads in Michigan, Missouri looks redder than it did before, and Utah is still bright red but a little less so.

Looking at a national level, Harris, Warren, and Sanders improve their win probabilities against Trump in the probabilistic view. Everyone else is flat.

Dem	25 Aug	1 Sep	𝚫
Biden	99.9%	99.9%	Flat
Sanders	95.5%	95.7%	+0.2%
O'Rourke	80.0%	80.0%	Flat
Warren	71.0%	72.6%	+1.6%
Harris	65.8%	67.9%	+2.1%
Buttigieg	67.1%	67.1%	Flat

Now, let's look at the three states with new polls:

Biden and Sanders improve their polling averages noticeably with this new polling from EPIC-MRA. Warren and Harris also improve slightly. EPIC-MRA did not poll Buttigieg and O'Rourke.

Bottom line, Biden and Sanders continue to be in a position to easily win Michigan. The others are all leading, but narrowly, and the state would very much be in play.

This is the first 2020 polling for Missouri. RRG polled Biden, Sanders, O'Rourke, and Harris. It is actually an old poll from April, but it was new to Election Graphs this week.

In all four cases the averages moved in the Republican direction.

This first set of Missouri polling ranged from an 8% Trump win (against Biden) to a 16% Trump win (against Harris). Only one poll so far, but it isn't looking like Missouri is one of those red states that is getting less red.

Utah, on the other hand, does look like a red state that might be getting a little less red. Maybe.

The first 2020 polling for Utah is from Y2 Analytics, and the sample sizes on their head-to-head matches are extraordinarily small (from 140 to 153), so you should take them with a massive pile of salt.

The average of the margins in Utah from 2000 to 2016 is a 36.1% Republican victory. Utah has not gone Democratic since Lyndon Johnson's 1964 landslide over Barry Goldwater. Utah is a VERY red state.

This new poll shows a range of results in our top six candidates from Sanders winning by 6%, to Buttigieg losing by 20%. Biden and Warren were within the margin of error of winning too.

Even that Buttigieg loss does better than the historical average. But Sanders WINNING? That is a very surprising result for Utah.

And, while he is not in the six most polled candidates against Trump, so we wouldn't usually mention it, Y2 also polled Booker against Trump, and had Booker beating Trump by 12%!

Frankly, these Utah results are tough to believe. It would take a lot more than one poll to make it reasonable to think that Utah was competitive for ANY of the Democratic candidates, let alone that one of them was leading by double digits.

Which is of course why you look at averages, not at individual polls. This Y2 poll when averaged in with the 2004 to 2016 elections, is enough for Election Graphs to put the poll average for the best of our six Democrats (Sanders) at a 26.8% Trump lead, which still translates into a 100% chance of Trump winning Utah.

(And for the record, Trump would lead Booker by 25.6%, also a 100% chance of Trump winning.)

If we get more Utah polls showing a close race, maybe this will change. But for the moment the weight of the historical averages means we treat this Y2 poll with extreme skepticism, and Utah remains a very very Red state.

And that's where things stand at the beginning of September.

429.2 days until polls start to close.

For more information:

Good Polling Week For Democrats

Since last week's update, there have been new polls in Nevada, Colorado, and Arizona.

There was only one category change. Biden's poll average in Nevada moved from a 4.5% lead to a 6.2% lead which changed the state from Weak Biden to Strong Biden in the Election Graphs categorizations.

This change drops Trump's best case in the categorization view to a 26 electoral vote win over Biden as Nevada is moved out of the list of potential Trump wins:

The Biden vs. Trump tipping point also shifted from a 3.4% Biden lead in Maine's 2nd congressional district to a 4.9% Biden lead in Virginia.

But taking into account the polling changes in all three states, and looking at the probabilistic model, of the six most polled Democrats against Trump, five improved their odds of winning the electoral college.

The only exception was O'Rourke. None of the new polls included him. Again.

Dem	18 Aug	25 Aug	𝚫
Biden	99.7%	99.9%	+0.2%
Sanders	94.1%	95.5%	+1.4%
O'Rourke	80.0%	80.0%	Flat
Warren	67.6%	71.0%	+3.4%
Buttigieg	63.2%	67.1%	+3.9%
Harris	62.9%	65.8%	+2.9%

The odds favor all of the Democrats over Trump at this point. There is a massive spread between the extremes, however. At the low-end, Harris loses about a third of the simulated elections to Trump. Meanwhile at the high-end Biden looks very solid indeed with that 99.9%.

As usual, disclaimers are essential. What we see NOW may not resemble what things look like by the time we get to the Iowa caucuses, let alone by the time we get to Election Day 2020.

Although as every day passes, this is less true, many people still are not paying close attention to this contest, and many people don't know much about Harris and Buttigieg and some of the others. Name recognition and the intensity of the coverage does matter, and that will all ramp up as voting approaches.

Perhaps even more importantly, the general election campaign itself won't go into full swing until it looks like the winning candidates on both sides are inevitable, and that will make a huge difference. For instance, I would be surprised to see that 99.9% for Biden survive contact with an all-out assault from the Republican side.

With that said, let's look at the three states individually:

Biden is the only candidate breaking out in Arizona. The polling average still shows a Trump lead, but the three actual 2020 polls so far show one tie and two Biden leads. The state is held on the red side by the Republican wins in 2012 and 2016. At the very least though, it is clear that Biden puts Arizona into contention.

Warren's poll average has also improved a little bit on the 2000-2016 average Republican win margin of 7.6%, but she has yet to show a single poll with her leading Trump.

The other four have barely moved the needle. And Sanders and Harris are doing worse in Arizona than the historical average.

The difference between Biden and the others is even starker when you look at the chart showing the odds of winning Arizona:

Biden is now up to a 31.8% chance of winning Arizona. The other five candidates range from an 0.3% chance (Sanders) to a 1.8% chance (Warren).

Unlike Texas, where it looks like all the Democrats are making the state look bluer, Arizona is much more selective.

The Emerson poll this week is the very first Colorado polling for 2020. Biden, Sanders, Warren, and Buttigieg all lead Trump by more than 5% in the new poll. Harris leads by a narrower 3%.

In all of these cases, the average drops significantly in the blue direction, because it is the 2000 election results that are falling off the average, where the Republican won by an 8.4% margin.

One poll is not enough to move the state out of the "Weak Democrat" category though. But if the next Colorado results are similar to these, the next election to drop off the average will be the 4.7% Republican win in 2004 and the state will probably move to "Strong Democrat" at that point.

Looking at the odds view though, you can see that even the move from this one new poll makes a big difference. With just the average of the last five elections as the poll average, we put the Democratic chance of winning Colorado at 58.4%. An advantage, but just barely.

With this first 2020 poll, excluding O'Rourke since no pollster included him, the Democrats range from an 81.2% chance of winning the state (Harris) to a 90.9% chance (Biden).

All the Democrats improved their averages in Nevada except for Buttigieg.

Biden is the standout, moving into "Strong Biden" territory, with his 6.2% margin translating into a 94.8% win chance. The other Democrats range from a 70.6% chance to win (Warren) to an 88.2% chance to win (Sanders).

And that is where we are this week.

436.1 days until polls start to close.

For more information:

Muddled Week

Since last week's update, there have been new polls in New Hampshire, North Carolina, Alaska, and Washington.

In terms of category changes:

NH has moved from Strong Warren to Weak Warren
NC has moved from Weak Sanders to Weak Trump

That's it.

Biden's tipping point also moved from a 3.9% lead to a 3.4% lead.

All three of these changes are moves in Trump's direction. But if you look at the more granular changes, things are muddled, and it seems like a pretty flat week overall.

The national "win odds" from the probabilistic model now look like this:

In terms of changes since we looked last week:

Dem	11 Aug	18 Aug	𝚫
Biden	99.8%	99.7%	-0.1%
Sanders	94.8%	94.1%	-0.7%
O'Rourke	80.0%	80.0%	Flat
Warren	65.8%	67.6%	+1.8%
Buttigieg	62.4%	63.2%	+0.8%
Harris	63.7%	62.9%	-0.8%

Warren and Buttigieg improve a little bit.

Biden, Sanders, and Harris weaken a bit.

Harris drops to being the weakest of these six candidates against Trump.

O'Rourke doesn't move. But that is because none of the four polls this week even bothered to include him. Oops.

Let's look at each of these four states:

Biden is the only Democrat with a lead in North Carolina.

Before the Civitas poll added this week, Sanders had a very narrow lead in North Carolina as well. But although the Civitas poll was RELEASED this week, it had an earlier mid-date than the SurveyUSA poll that had given Sanders that lead last week, and so the Civitas poll (which showed a Trump lead) essentially erased that change from the chart.

The rest of the Democrats all lose to Trump, but narrowly.

The trends all show the Democrats generally improving as more polls come in though.

Except for Harris. She is getting weaker in North Carolina.

The Zogby poll added this week is the first general election polling for Washington State. Washington is a very blue state. But all five Democrats polled move the polling average to be even bluer than the 2000-2016 historical average.

It is of note that this is one of the very few states where Sanders does better against Trump than Biden does.

As usual, though, those two do noticeably better than the other Democrats.

Biden and Sanders have strong leads over Trump in New Hampshire. The other Democrats also lead, but by more narrow margins. The general trend as new polling comes in is toward the Democrats though.

Except for Warren's recent move in the other direction.

These are the very first Alaska polls this cycle.

Alaska is a very red state. But all five Democrats polled improve their Election Graphs averages over the historical average of the 2000-2016 elections that I use as a starting point before there are any polls.

As usual, Biden does best against Trump, followed by Sanders.

But Alaska is still a very red state.

And that is where things stand this week.

443.0 days until polls start to close.

For more information:

Blue Texas?!?

I hate to talk about Texas two posts in a row, but even though there have been polls in California, North Carolina, and North Dakota since the last update as well, once again the most significant changes are in Texas. The two new polls in Texas continued to move things toward the Democrats.

In Texas, Harris did move within 5% of Trump in the Election Graphs average. This change leaves Buttigieg the only one of the six most polled Democrats where Trump has a Texas lead more than 5%.

More notably though, with this set of polls, the lead flips over to the Democratic side for Biden, Sanders, and O'Rourke.

Now, this very well may be transient. These leads may well evaporate long before the election. At the moment, though, three of the top six Democrats are LEADING in Texas.

That is remarkable.

At the moment, O'Rourke has the most significant margin of the three. He has a 2.1% lead. Which to be clear, is a very narrow lead. It translates into a 66.4% chance of winning the state, compared to 33.6% for Trump. But still. For now, it makes Texas notably blue on my national O'Rourke vs. Trump map:

After last week's update, I got a comment on Facebook saying one of the recent polls looked like an outlier. Even at the time, it only looked like an outlier for some candidate pairings, not for others, but let's look at what things look like now for each of the three Democrats showing a lead in Texas.

First Biden vs. Trump: It is hard to tell just visually which are the last five polls that are included in the average because the 5th and 6th oldest polls are close together in time, but number five is the one with a 7% Trump lead. That was a poll from WPA Intelligence back in April, and if anything, THAT is the recent poll that looks like an outlier. If you excluded that poll, the average of the last five polls would be a 2.1% Biden lead instead of the 0.5% lead he has.

UT Tyler is responsible for two of the polls in the average because they polled Texas right before and right after the second Democratic Debates. But even accounting for that there looks to be plenty of evidence from multiple pollsters at this point that Biden is leading Trump in Texas at the moment.

Now Sanders vs. Trump: Every single one of the polls from the last year shows a close race for this paring. Three show Trump with a small lead. Three show Sanders slightly ahead. Of the five that go into the Election Graphs average, three have Sanders ahead. These three are the most recent. Two of these three are from UT Tyler. But there are also two Emerson polls in the five poll average.

Overall, showing Sanders with an 0.5% lead seems reasonable here.

Sanders matches Biden with that 0.5% lead. In both cases, this is just barely a lead. It translates into a 51.1% chance of the Democrat winning, vs. 48.9% for Trump based on historical Election Graphs results. So it is essentially a coin toss.

Finally O'Rourke vs. Trump: If we look at all the polls this year, the two that look like outliers are the Atlantic poll from January showing Trump ahead by 13%, and the UT Tyler poll from July showing O'Rourke ahead by 11.2%. The Atlantic one is already out of the five poll average. If you take out that UT Tyler poll (leaving the other UT Tyler poll that shows a 5.7% O'Rourke lead) and average the last five polls other than that one, O'Rourke's 2.1% lead disappears, and you have a 0.3% lead for Trump instead.

So of these three, O'Rourke's lead, while the biggest, seems the most likely to be due to an outlier result rather than a real edge.

Let's look at the comparison of all six democrats against Trump:

The leads by Biden, Sanders, and O'Rourke may not be real. Or they may be temporary, something that will be gone as soon as we have a few more polls. And even if they are not imaginary, they are very narrow leads.

But five of the six best polled Democrats are making Texas look like it is in contention. And the 6th isn't far behind. That is the real story of Texas at the moment.

It is in play in a way it hasn't been in decades.

Biden, Sanders, Warren, and Harris all improved with this week's North Carolina poll as well, with Sanders now joining Biden with leads in the Election Graphs averages over Trump.

As one might guess, the new polls in North Dakota and California didn't change what you would expect of those two states.

Between Texas and North Carolina, there is a pretty significant impact on the national picture:

On the straight-up "Expected Case" where each candidate wins every state they lead the Election Graphs poll average, you can see the improvements for Biden and O'Rourke as they take the lead in Texas, and for Sanders, as he takes the lead in both Texas and North Carolina.

By this way of looking at things, out of these six Democrats, all except Harris are now ahead in the Electoral College view, with Harris losing to Trump by six electoral votes.

Looking at the more sophisticated probabilistic model, we can see that all six Democrats win in the median case. Biden, Sanders, and O'Rourke win by a bit larger margins, while Warren, Buttigieg, and Harris are all bunched up together with relatively narrow wins.

The median, of course, doesn't tell the whole story.

As of this week, the candidate detail pages now all show charts showing the likely ranges of Electoral College results given the results of our probabilistic model.

The exact distributions are very spiky, with certain electoral college margins being much more likely than others right next to them due to how state distributions work. You can see an example distribution based on 2016 data on this post from January describing the Monte Carlo methods I'm using in my model.

I've considered a couple of different visualizations of the exact distribution, and may still do that in the future if I have time, but for now, I thought it would be more useful to show a simplified version highlighting "zones" of likelihood.

The dark line in the center is the median.

The darkest band includes 1σ (68.27%) of the simulation outcomes.

The next darkest band includes 2σ (95.45%) of the results.

And the lightest band includes 3σ (99.73%) of them.

So basically, the darker the color band, the more likely the result.

You can see the 3σ band only barely includes the possibility of a Trump victory.

Compare this with how this chart looks for Buttigieg, currently the weakest of these six candidates:

While Biden shows relentless improvement across all bands as additional polling comes in, Buttigieg's median stays just about constant, while all of the probability zones widen. Buttigieg's median result is not doing any better or any worse as we get more polls and time progresses, but the uncertainty on how Buttigieg would do is increasing.

Looking at these probability band trends tells you a lot more than just looking at the medians.

Of course, you can also look at the simulation and count the wins on each side, and the number of 269-269 ties, and then come up with the odds for each of those events. That's where all the probabilistic results I've mentioned in the last few updates have come from, but now there are charts for that too. Looking again at Biden and Buttigieg as examples:

You can see that as more and more polling has come in, Biden has increased his chance of winning, to the point where it is now nearly 100%. (Insert at this point the usual caveats about how long it is until the election and how much can change.)

Meanwhile, Buttigieg has not done that. Chances of a Trump win over Buttigieg have increased as more polling has come in.

Those are the two new graph types I added this week. I hope you like them.

Lets put this all together by looking at the comparisons of the odds for each of the Democrats against Trump.

To keep the same "Down good for Democrat. Up good for Republican" orientation, we would look at the odds of a Republican win. It looks like this:

Given that we have the same Republican in all six cases though, it has been somewhat handier to look at the odds of the Democrat winning.

So let's flip it over.

Because there is a non-zero and changing chance of a 269-269 tie in all of these cases, these aren't quite exactly just the same graph reversed top to bottom. They differ by the width of the white strip of ties in the two previous charts. But it is close.

You can see the jumps up with Sanders and O'Rourke based on the batch of new polling in this update. The polls were good for Biden too, but he has very little room left to improve in this view.

Let's look at the table:

Dem	3 Aug	11 Aug	𝚫
Biden	99.6%	99.8%	+0.2%
Sanders	89.0%	94.8%	+5.8%
O'Rourke	64.7%	80.0%	+15.3%
Warren	58.2%	65.8%	+7.6%
Harris	62.2%	63.7%	+1.5%
Buttigieg	62.9%	62.4%	-0.5%

The big gainers this last week were O'Rourke, Warren, and Sanders.

Warren, Harris, and Buttigieg are still only a little better than tossups against Trump, while Biden, Sanders, and O'Rourke look like clear favorites.

450.7 days until polls start to close.

For more information:

Whoa, Look at Texas

Since the last update (not counting the update about new graphs) there have been new polls in Maine (All), South Carolina, Ohio, Michigan, Texas, and North Dakota.

Of those, only Texas and Michigan resulted in category changes for any of the six best-polled candidate pairs.

In Michigan, Buttigieg moved from a 6.4% lead to a weak 2.8% lead in the Election Graphs average.

In Texas, Sanders, Warren, and O'Rourke pulled Trump's lead down under 5% into the "weak" category in the Election Graphs average. Biden had already gotten there back in June.

Texas is the headline.

Trump's lead in Texas in the Election Graphs average is now down to under 5% for four of the six most polled Democrats against him. Only Buttigieg and Harris lag. But even they are trending stronger as more polls come in.

None of the averages show a Democratic lead in Texas. That would be seismic. However, at this point five of the six Democrats have at least one poll showing them ahead in Texas. (The exception is Buttigieg.)

Nobody would call Texas blue at this point. But it is trending purple. We have enough polls for enough candidates showing only narrow Republican leads (or even Democratic leads) to say that it looks competitive.

Now, what does competitive mean? Let's look at the "odds" view, where we use the historical performance of final Election Graphs averages to convert the poll margins into odds of victory:

Democrats making Texas "close" essentially means Trump has a noticeably less than 100% chance of winning.

Of these six Democrats, Buttigieg is weakest… with Trump still having a 99.2% chance of winning the state.

Biden is strongest, but Trump still has a 64.6% chance of winning Texas against him.

Now, that means Biden has a 35.4% shot, which is remarkable given where Texas has been in other cycles. But Trump is still favored.

Now is the time to once again mention that Election Graphs does not model how the race evolves. These "odds" are static snapshots in time. "If the election was today." The election is not even remotely today. Polls can swing wildly in just a matter of weeks, let alone the 15 months we still have until the general election.

This "closeness" in Texas could evaporate long before we get to November 2020. Or it could turn into a Democratic lead.

But it is clear that Texas is a state to watch, and Republicans will need to play defense there, and not take it for granted, as has often been the case in recent cycles.

Now, the national picture, where all the caveats above also apply:

This batch of polls changed the "Best Case" scenarios for Sanders, Warren, and O'Rourke in the category based ranges (their best cases now include winning Texas). But the "Expected Case" and "Tipping Point" did not change.

However, the new probabilistic based simulations do show changes worth reviewing.

This first chart shows the "median case" of the simulations, the spot where half the time the Republican does better, and half the time the Democrat does better.

Biden doing better than the rest of the pack stands out clearly. His median case is a 126 electoral vote margin over Trump. To put this in historical context, this would exactly match Obama's 2012 margin over Romney but be quite a bit less than Obama's 2008 margin over McCain.

Sanders also breaks out from the pack, doing considerably better than the other Democrats.

Both Biden and Sanders have improved their median positions significantly over the last few weeks covered by this batch of new polls.

Meanwhile, Warren, Buttigieg, O'Rourke, and Harris stay within a zone maintaining only small electoral college margins in the median case.

So, switching from looking at margins to looking at chances of winning:

Biden is pegged near the top right now. 99.6% chance of victory over Trump. There isn't that much room to improve, although weaker polls could certainly knock him off this pedestal.

Sanders clocks in second at an 89.0% chance of beating Trump.

Looking at the others, while they do have the upper hand on Trump, if this were election day, it wouldn't be fair to say it was anything other than "too close to call" with odds ranging from Warren at 58.2% to O'Rourke at 64.7%.

Election Graphs didn't have a probabilistic view in 2016, but the median "chance of Trump winning" from the sites that did was 14% going into Election Day. Only Biden and Sanders push Trump below that line at the moment.

So how have things been changing?

Comparing the odds of the Democrat winning from the update on June 23rd to where things stand now, we see this:

Dem	23 Jun	3 Aug	𝚫
Biden	99.4%	99.6%	+0.2%
Sanders	86.0%	89.0%	+3.0%
Buttigieg	65.5%	62.9%	-2.6%
Harris	62.3%	62.2%	-0.1%
O'Rourke	50.5%	64.7%	+14.2%
Warren	53.2%	58.2%	+5.0%

The stand out is, of course, O'Rourke. His improvement is almost all due to his performance in the latest Texas poll, which was better than all other Democrats, and significantly better than his previous polling in the state as well. So he adds to his chances of winning Texas, which while still under 50%, is enough to boost his chances of taking the whole thing significantly.

Warren and Sanders also improved a bit. Buttigieg dropped a bit. And Biden and Harris are essentially flat.

Finally, a quick preview of a new chart type coming soon to Election Graphs:

It is the equivalent of the Electoral College trend chart based on the straight-up categorization of states based on who is ahead, but with the results of the probabilistic modeling.

The dark line represents the median electoral college result in the simulation. Then the bands represent result ranges at different levels of probability. The deeper the shade, the more likely the result.

This is a visual representation of the single candidate time series of the probabilistic summary now on the comparison page:

The text summary will also, of course, be added to the candidate national summary pages once I get a chance.

I also added little circles in a lot of the time series charts to highlight the current values better. I think it makes the charts clearer. Hope you like them.

In any case… 458.1 days until polls start to close. Stay tuned!

For more information:

New Charts for the Probabilistic View

A couple of months ago, Election Graphs added charts showing how the odds of candidates winning each state evolved. Since then we have referred to those odds quite a bit, and have also discussed how I can combine those individual state by state odds through a Monte Carlo simulation.

I started doing those simulations offline and occasionally reporting results based on that here on the blog. But these were still only manual simulations I was doing offline. Nothing on the ElectionGraphs.com pages for Election 2020 showed this.

Well, a couple of weekends ago, I fixed that, and have done a bit of debugging since, so it is ready to talk about here. I have started with the comparison page where you can look at how various candidate pairs stack up against each other.

Here is the key chart:

This chart shows the evolution over time of the odds of the Democrats winning as new state polls have come in. The comparison page also shows graphs for the odds of a Republican win, if you prefer looking at things from that point of view. Those two don't add up to 100% because there is of course also a chance of a 269-269 electoral college tie, and there is also a chart of that. Together the three will add to 100%.

The charts are automatically updated as I add new polls to my database.

The summary block for each candidate pair on the comparison page has also been updated to include the win odds information:

For the moment this is only on the comparison page, not on the individual candidate pages. This summary also contains more detail than is available in the graphs at this point. I will be adding more charts to close that gap when I get a chance.

I've used the Harris vs. Trump summary as the example here because it (along with O'Rourke vs. Trump) contains something curious that requires a closer look. Namely, you'll notice that the "Expected" scenario (where every candidate wins all the states where they lead in the poll average) shows a different winner than the "Median" scenario (the "center" of the Monte Carlo simulations when sorted by outcome).

When you look at the charts for the expected case vs. the median case, it is evident that the median in the Monte Carlo simulations does not precisely track the expected case. In fact, in some instances, the trends don't even move in the same direction. So what is going on here?

It would take some detailed digging to understand specific cases, but as an example, a quick look at the spectrum of the states for Harris vs. Trump can get some insights.

Now, I don't currently have a version of this spectrum showing win odds instead of the margin, but without that, you can still immediately see why even though Trump leads by six electoral votes "if everybody wins the states they lead", Harris might win in the median case in a simulation that looks at the situation more deeply.

The key is the margins in the swing states. With only a six electoral vote margin, it only takes three electoral votes flipping to make a 269-269 tie, and 4 to switch the winner.

Fundamentally, there are four "barely Trump" states that have a good chance of ending up going to Harris, but only one "barely Harris" jurisdiction that has a decent chance of going to Trump.

Looking at the details:

Trump's lead in Virginia's (13 EV) poll average is only 0.1%, which translates into a 44.9% chance of a Harris win.

Trump's lead in Florida's (29 EV) poll average is only 0.5%, which translates into a 40.2% chance of a Harris win.

Trump's lead in Ohio's (18 EV) poll average is only 1.2%, which translates into a 30.9% chance of a Harris win.

Trump's lead in Iowa's (6 EV) poll average is only 1.5%, which translates into a 28.4% chance of a Harris win.

Those are all the states with a Trump lead where Harris has more than a 25% chance of winning the state. Harris only needs to win ONE of those states to end up winning nationwide. Doing the math, if the odds of winning are independent (which is not strictly true, but is probably a decent first approximation), there is an 83.7% chance that Harris will win at least one of these four states.

Now, there is one Harris state where Trump has a greater than 25% chance of winning. That would be Colorado, where Harris leads by 1.2%, which translates into a 41.6% chance of a Trump win. So that compensates a bit.

But in the end, with this mix of swing states, Harris wins more often than she loses in the simulations (62.4% of the time), and the median case is a narrow 16 EV Harris win.

The straight-up "if everybody wins all the states they are ahead in" expected case metric is a decent way of looking at things as far as it goes. Election Graphs has used it, along with the tipping point, as the two primary methods of looking at how elections are trending in the analysis here from 2008 to 2016. And it has done pretty well. In those three elections, 155/163 ≈ 95.09% of races did indeed go to the candidates who were ahead in the poll average. That view has the advantage of simplicity.

But the Monte Carlo simulations (using state win probabilities based on Election Graph's previous results) give a way of quantifying how often the underdog wins states based on the margin, and how that rolls up into the national results. It can catch subtleties that are out of reach if you only look at who is ahead.

So from now on, Election Graphs will be looking at things both ways. The site will still have the expected case, tipping point, and "best cases" gotten from simply classifying who is leading and which states are close. But we'll also be looking at the probabilistic view. We may be looking at things the new way a bit more. But they will both be here.

Right now that information is on the national comparison page, the state detail pages, the state comparison pages, and the blog sidebar. There is still nothing about the probabilistic view on the candidate pages. That is next on the list once I get some time to put some things together.

469.6 days until polls start to close.

Stay tuned.