Election Graphs – Page 9 – presidential elections, one graph at a time

Most Dems improve against Trump while Buttigieg weakens

Since the last update, there have been new polls in Kentucky, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Florida (x2), and North Carolina.

With this update, Buttigieg vs. Trump has now replaced Harris vs. Trump in the "five best-polled candidate combinations" that I'll spend time on in these posts. The new list is Biden, Warren, Buttigieg, Sanders, and O'Rourke all paired against Trump.

With this latest batch of polls, we have the following changes:

National:

Trump best case vs. Warren has changed: Warren 214 to Trump 324 -> Warren 204 to Trump 334
Warren vs. Trump tipping point change: Trump by 0.1% in VA -> Warren by 0.5% in FL
Warren vs. Trump expected case change: Warren 266 to Trump 272 -> Warren 295 to Trump 243

Buttigieg vs. Trump tipping point change: Buttigieg by 1.1% in IA -> Buttigieg by 0.6% in PA

Sanders vs. Trump tipping point change: Sanders by 1% in IA -> Sanders by 1.3% in FL
Sanders vs. Trump expected case change: Sanders 272 to Trump 266 -> Sanders 301 to Trump 237

O'Rourke vs. Trump tipping point change: Trump by 0.5% in FL -> Trump by 0.3% in FL

Wisconsin:

Warren vs. Trump state category change: WI has moved from Strong Warren to Weak Warren

Florida:

Sanders vs. Trump state category change: FL has moved from Weak Trump to Weak Sanders
Warren vs. Trump state category change: FL has moved from Weak Trump to Weak Warren

OK, now on to the graphs… national first:

In the expected case, Warren and Sanders improve.

Notably, Warren moves from losing to winning with this update.

Biden continues to do the best of the five Democrats, while O'Rourke does worst.

In the tipping point Warren, Sanders, and O'Rourke improve, while Buttigieg weakens.

Once again, you can see Warren crossing the center line to the winning side of the field.

And once again Biden does best, while O'Rourke does worst.

Now let's look at all of the states that had new polls in this batch:

In Florida, O'Rourke and Buttigieg are losing to Trump. Biden, Warren, and Sanders are beating him. As usual, Biden is doing better than the other Democrats. But every single matchup here is close. As usual, Florida is a battleground state.

Biden has a healthy lead in Pennsylvania. O'Rourke is behind Trump. All the rest of these five Democrats are in the lead over Trump, but they have narrow edges.

In Michigan, Biden is doing best. Warren is doing worst. Strong leads for Biden, Sanders, and Buttigieg. Warren and O'Rourke ahead by narrower margins. But all five leading Trump.

Biden is the only Democrat leading Trump in North Carolina. But all five would make it a close race. North Carolina is definitely in play at the moment.

In Wisconsin, Biden is doing best, O'Rourke is doing worst. Biden and Sanders have strong leads. Buttigieg, Warren, and O'Rourke are only weakly ahead. But all five lead Trump.

Kentucky is very very solidly red. With the very first Kentucky poll of the cycle, it looks like it may be even redder this time around than the average of the last five elections.

OK, finally, the odds based view of the national race. I haven't managed to make this view live on the site with graphs and all yet, but I'll at least provide updates here.

Democrat	Dem Odds	Trump Odds	Tie Odds
Biden	99.4%	0.4%	0.1%
Sanders	86.0%	13.2%	0.8%
Buttigieg	65.5%	33.2%	1.2%
Warren	53.2%	44.9%	1.9%
O'Rourke	50.5%	47.8%	1.7%

For those missing Harris, since she dropped off my top five, she's now at a 62.3% chance of winning.

It remains striking what a vast range there is between Biden on the one end of this spectrum and O'Rourke on the other.

As always, the caveat that things can and will change, but if the election was today, Biden looks about as close to a sure thing as you can get (much stronger than the median odds based view Clinton had, which was at about 86% on election day), while meanwhile, O'Rourke looks like a coin toss.

If this is primarily due to name recognition and the main deciding factor for voters is simply Trump vs. non-Trump, you should see the divergence between various Democrats reduce over the next few months as people get to know some of the lesser-known Democrats.

If on the other hand, these kinds of differences persist as we get closer to the Iowa caucuses, then there are lots of people out there where the choice of Democrat does indeed influence them on their final vote. In this case, "electability" becomes a valid criterion for Democrats to consider when making their choices in the primaries and caucuses.

3.1 days until the first Democratic debate.

499.1 days until polls start to close on Election Day 2020.

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.

Trump Internal Polls All Good News For Biden

Since the last update, there have been polls in North Carolina, New York, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Florida, Texas, Virginia, Maine (All), Minnesota, Iowa, Ohio, and Georgia.

Now, most (but not all) of these are internal Trump campaign polls that were leaked and reported on by first ABC and then NBC. The full internal polling reportedly included 17 states and matchups against multiple Democrats, but the leaks so far only include Biden versus Trump results in 12 of them. Because this is a leak of internal polls and not "regular polls," I tweeted a series of notes on these polls, that I will repeat here:

1st: Some aggregators automatically exclude internal polling because of potential selective release bias, etc. I default to including as much as possible. So they are reflected on Election Graphs.
2nd: I’m going with ABC on the field dates, not NBC. ABC reports March 15th to March 28th, which is precisely two weeks. NBC reports March 13th to March 28th, which includes two extra days. These almost certainly are the same batch of polls though.
3rd: ABC and NBC differ slightly on their reports of the results in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Florida. In these cases, I will include both, but weighted as half polls, just as I do when a pollster reports results in multiple ways (with & without 3rd parties, registered vs. likely voters, etc.)
4th: For some states this leak only includes margins. Election Graphs only uses margin in calculations, but it displays & reports candidate results too. For the instances where we only have leaked margins, I will log the polls such that Trump-Biden=Margin and Trump+Biden=100%.
5th: If a range of possible margins is reported rather than a specific margin, I will log these as the center of that range.
6th: If more detailed leaks become available, I will adjust how these polls are recorded to reflect any new information.

With those caveats, here are the status changes that occurred as a result of this batch of polls. After that, we'll start looking at the graphs.

All of these changes are for the Biden versus Trump matchup.

State Level:

Florida (29 EV) has moved from Weak Trump to Weak Biden
Virginia (13 EV) has moved from Weak Trump to Weak Biden

National Level:

Expected case change: Biden 299 to Trump 239 -> Biden 341 to Trump 197
Tipping point moves from Biden by 1.9% in NC to Biden by 3.4% in ME-CD2.

We'll look nationally first, then the states that changed categories, then a brief look at the locations that did not. Finally, I'll report on what all this does to the Monte Carlo simulation of the national race.

Keep in mind that all of the leaked internal polls were in the field back in March, so they are older data, and will change not just the end of the lines in the charts, but the shape of those lines over March, April, May, and June.

Rather than going graph by graph, here is the whole summary block from the Biden versus Trump page. The two charts on the right show a clear trend toward Biden.

Now, we are still at the stage where most states don't have five polls yet, so we are filling in data based on previous general election results when constructing state averages. So it is crucial to note that this "movement" is mostly not representing changes in public opinion yet, but rather is reflecting the increasing knowledge over time of what Biden vs. Trump looks like specifically, rather than a generic Democrat vs. Republican based on the average historical results from 2000 to 2016.

So the trend may not represent people flocking to Biden over the last few months, but instead, it shows that the more polls we get in more states, the stronger Trump looks against Trump.

Also important to note that while the "expected case" now has Biden winning by 144 electoral votes, a month before the 2016 election, the "expected case" was a 154 electoral vote win for Clinton. By election day that had slipped to only an eight electoral vote lead. And of course, Trump won by 77 electoral votes. The "expected case" can move very quickly, and does not give the whole picture anyway.

Similarly, the tipping point is now a 3.4% Biden lead, while less than two weeks before the election, Clinton had a 5.4% tipping point lead. That evaporated to 1.6% in the last two weeks, and the actual tipping point in the election was an 0.8% Trump margin.

So Biden looks formidable, but Clinton looked even stronger at times.

Also, things can move very quickly even in two weeks, let alone 506 days.

We have a long way to go.

OK, now the two states that changed categories in this update:

Including the two slightly different versions of the Trump internals leak as one averaged result, there have only been three Biden vs. Trump polls in Florida so far. And they cover a vast range. The average (including 2016 and 2008 to round things out) is a 1.0% Biden lead.

This lead translates into about a 55.6% chance of a Biden win, and a 44.4% chance of a Trump win.

As usual, Florida is a swing state.

The Trump internals leak is the very first 2020 polling for Virginia. From 2000-2016, there had been 3 Democratic wins, and 2 Republican wins. The average had been a very narrow 0.1% Republican lean for Virginia.

With this new poll, the 8.0% margin Republican win from 2000 slips off the average and a 17.0% lead for Biden enters. That's quite a swing! As a result, the current poll average moves to a 4.9% Biden lead, which translates into a 90.9% chance of winning the state.

And now, quickly, the other states with Biden vs. Trump polls in this update that did not change category:

Trump leads in Texas by only 1.0%, which translates into a 66.4% chance of victory if the election was today. Trump is still a favorite in Texas, but that this is even a question is striking in and of itself.

Biden leads by 8.5% in Pennsylvania. That would be a 99.1% chance of winning. (If the election was held today, which of course it is not.)

Biden leads by 0.9% in Ohio. 55.3% chance of winning the state.

The Trump internal poll was the first Biden vs. Trump polling for Georgia. It shows Biden with a significant lead, but given the historical Republican wins in Georgia, it will take a few more polls showing a Biden lead before the average goes there. For now, the average sits at a 5.8% Trump lead, which is a 98.1% chance of a Trump victory.

Biden leads by 7.1% in Michigan. 98.8% chance of winning.

Biden leads by 1.9% in North Carolina. 67.0% chance of winning.

The internal Trump poll is the first Biden vs. Trump polling in Minnesota. Biden is now leading by 7.4%, which would be a 99.1% chance of winning.

Biden leads by 7.5% in Wisconsin. 98.3% chance of winning.

Iowa is currently the closest state in the Biden vs. Trump spectrum of Election Graphs averages, with Trump squeaking out an 0.1% lead, which translates into a 55.1% chance of a Trump win.

The Trump internal polling was the very first polling on Maine. Biden is looking stronger than the historical average for Maine general elections. Biden is leading by 11.9%, which translates into a 100.0% chance of winning the state.

There were also polling results in New York (from Spry, not Trump's internal polling), but only for Gillibrand and de Blasio, who aren't in our "top five matchups against Trump" list that I discuss here on the blog. It was also heavily blue New York, and the results were unsurprising.

So finally, an updated look at how where the Monte Carlo simulation puts the Trump vs. Biden race after this update. As usual:

This simulation is "if the election was held today," which it is not.
The model uses the past accuracy of the final Election Graphs averages in the 2008-2016 elections to estimate poll-average reliability in 2020. It is always possible that polling accuracy in 2020 will differ in important ways from previous election cycles.
We still have very sparse polling, and many states have averages that are based in whole or in part on election results from 2000 to 2016 rather than actual 2020 polls.

OK. With that out of the way, a Monte Carlo simulation with 1,000,001 trial election runs:

Median result: Biden by 110
1𝜎 (68.3%) range: Biden by 168 to Biden by 56
2𝜎 (95.4%) range: Biden by 220 to Biden by 12
3𝜎 (99.7%) range: Biden by 254 to Trump by 24

Expressing the results as win odds instead:

Biden win: 99.1%
Trump win: 0.7%
269-269 tie: 0.2%

Ouch, this last set of polls, mostly the Trump internal points, really hurt for Trump. That 0.7% chance of a Trump win is down significantly from the 6.2% in the last update.

Should I repeat the caveats? The results above may look good for Biden, but it is still a long time until the election, and things will change.

Actually, they already have.

Because I had other things to do, it took me a couple of days to get this blog post done, and in the meantime, there have been new polls in five states. I'll be updating the site with the new data shortly, and will be back with another blog post if there are notable changes to mention.

503.9 days until polls start to close.

For more information:

Biden makes NC blue, mixed changes in MI, and what about TX?

Not counting the post about new features, there have been new polls in Florida, North Carolina, Michigan, and Texas since the last update.

For the five best-polled candidate pairs (Biden, Sanders, O'Rourke, Warren, and Harris versus Trump), there were only Election Graph status changes in North Carolina and Michigan. We'll summarize them up top, then start looking at specific graphs for more detail.

North Carolina:

Biden vs. Trump:
- State category change: NC has moved from Weak Trump to Weak Biden
- Expected case change: Biden 284 to Trump 254 -> Biden 299 to Trump 239
- Tipping point change: Biden by 0.3% in OH -> Biden by 1.9% in NC

Michigan

Sanders vs. Trump:
- State category change: MI has moved from Weak Sanders to Strong Sanders
- Trump best case vs. Sanders has changed: Sanders 214 to Trump 324 -> Sanders 230 to Trump 308
Warren vs. Trump:
- State category change: MI has moved from Strong Warren to Weak Warren
- Trump best case vs. Warren has changed: Warren 230 to Trump 308 -> Warren 214 to Trump 324
Harris vs. Trump:
- State category change: MI has moved from Strong Harris to Weak Harris
- Trump best case vs. Harris has changed: Harris 216 to Trump 322 -> Harris 200 to Trump 338

Let's look first at Biden in North Carolina:

The election graphs average now contains 4 actual 2020 polls, plus the 2016 election results. Of the four actual Biden vs. Trump polls, three show Biden leading. Together this pulls the average back to the blue side of the fence. (It was there before for a bit, just barely, back in January and February.) Biden now leads in the average by 1.9%, which based on Election Graphs history translates into about a 67% chance of winning the state if the election was today.

Looking at a wider range of candidates, Biden continues to do significantly better than any of the other Democrats against Trump. For Michigan, three candidates changed categories, so I'll skip the individual candidate charts and move straight to the comparison chart:

The Michigan comparison chart is messy. No question about that. In these latest changes, Sanders improved his average dramatically, while both Warren and Harris slipped significantly.

Now, the range within all these candidates is from Sanders having a lead of 7.3% to Harris, who is leading by 3.9%. So a 3.4% range. Not that large, right? Well, let's look at it converted into win odds:

With an odds based view, Sanders has a 98.9% chance of winning Michigan, while Harris only has an 83.2% chance. OK, that still doesn't sound like THAT big a difference, they are both pretty high.

But if you look at it as Trump's chance of winning, it goes from 1.1% against Sanders, to 16.8% against Harris. These are just the same numbers looked at a different way, but this way of looking at it makes the difference a lot clearer. Trump's chances in Michigan (based on current polling data) are much better against Harris than they are against Sanders.

A small difference in the poll averages can make a massive difference in the odds. The closer the state is, the more dramatic this impact is.

OK. The polls in the other two did not result in category changes, but we'll look at them quickly anyway.

Despite being large and usually very close, very few organizations have polled Florida so far. Of the five matchups shown here, we have two polls of Biden vs. Trump. We have one survey each for Sanders, Warren, and Harris vs. Trump. And O'Rourke vs. Trump hasn't been polled at all.

Given that, there isn't much to say about Florida yet. So far, Trump still beats all five Democrats. Biden does best. Harris does worst. But it is still very early, and we need more polls.

Ah. Texas. The most recent survey here was a Quinnipiac poll released on June 5th. That has resulted in a lot of conversation, because every Democrat they polled was within the margin of error of Trump, and Biden was beating Trump. Of course, you should never look at just a single poll. But look at the poll averages above.

The movement here does not represent changes in the opinion of Texans over the first half of 2019. What this does show are actual 2020 polls slowly taking over the average from the prior assumptions based on previous election cycles. As 2020 polls filter in, the poll averages have been rushing toward the Democrats.

None of these lines have flipped to a "Blue Texas" as of now though.

The Republicans still lead.

Looking at the odds view, only Biden has started to break out from the "extreme long shot" zone. He's now at a 30.9% chance of winning Texas.

You should still bet on Trump to win Texas, but at this point, it is already clear that Texas is looking a lot closer in 2020 than it has in previous election cycles.

Switching to the national view, a quick look at the expected case comparison:

Biden still looks best against Trump, O'Rourke looks worst against Trump.

And the tipping point:

After a brief time with Sanders having the best tipping point against Trump, Biden once again is doing best. And as with the expected case, O'Rourke looks worse.

While I don't have the statistics and graphs live on the website yet, I've started to do some offline Monte Carlo simulations of the whole country based on the state poll averages and the statistics for how well election graphs averages have done over the last three election cycles.

I think it is time to share a bit of that.

Before I present these, please remember that these are "if the election was held today" numbers, based on polling that is still very sparse.

These can and will change dramatically during the many months before the election.

First, let's look at Biden versus Trump and how it was changed by these four polls, in order by the mid-date of their field dates, which is how Election Graphs orders polls:

Timeframe	Biden Odds	Trump Odds	Tie Odds
Before polls	83.4%	15.6%	0.9%
After FL poll	87.4%	11.9%	0.8%
After MI poll	86.6%	12.6%	0.8%
After TX poll	89.9%	9.5%	0.6%
After NC poll	93.4%	6.2%	0.4%

You can see here that each of these individual polls noticeably changed the picture for Biden versus Trump. Collectively, this was a good polling week for Biden, significantly strengthening his position.

I won't repeat the poll by poll evolution for all five candidate pairs, but it is fascinating to see how they compare at the moment.

Democrat	Dem Odds	Trump Odds	Tie Odds
Biden	93.4%	6.2%	0.4%
Sanders	80.4%	18.4%	1.1%
Warren	63.3%	34.8%	2.0%
Harris	54.7%	43.2%	2.1%
O'Rourke	49.5%	48.8%	1.7%

It is striking how much of a difference there is between these five matchups.

There are important debates on the Democratic side about "Electability" and how it should or should not play into decisions people make about which candidate to support in the primary process.

In terms of that debate, I reiterate the caveats I stated earlier: These numbers will almost certainly change significantly over time, and we have only very sparse polling to generate these numbers.

I'll add that the Biden and Sanders advantage over the rest of the field is almost certainly at least partially due to name recognition, and as the campaign season progresses and other candidates gain visibility, this will probably fade.

But this is something to watch. And while looking at this NOW may not be indicative of much, if there is still a large spread between how the leading candidates fare by the time Democrats start voting in caucuses and primaries, it might make sense to start paying attention to odds like this as part (not all) of the decision making process.

I hope to have website features based on this sort of analysis up on the website before too long.

Keep watching.

514.2 days until polls start to close.

For more information:

New Charts for State Odds

There were new polls in Florida since the last update, but they didn't result in any category changes for the state, so instead I'll talk about some new features I added to the site a few days ago.

Back on January 29th, I discussed a way of taking the historical performance of state-level Election Graphs averages vs. actual election results and using that to infer the odds of the Republican or Democratic candidate winning based on the current Election Graphs average.

Now, to be clear, since this analysis compares the FINAL average before the election to the election results… it did not look at how those averages varied over time in the leadup to the election… this is looking at the odds "if the election was today." There is no factoring in the likelihood of changes over those intervening months as some more complicated models might.

But it still gives a snapshot I think is interesting, and EVERYTHING on Election Graphs is "if the election was today," so it fits in well.

In my May 8th post, I mentioned that I had added a display of these state-level win odds to the state detail pages and state comparison pages. I was only displaying the numbers, not any visualizations. As of this week, I am now displaying charts of how these numbers change over time as well.

To illustrate, I'll show examples of the new charts and how they relate to the older charts.

The above is the standard graph for an individual candidate combination and state that has been on Election Graphs since the 2016 cycle. It shows dots for the specific polls and a red line for the Election Graphs average. While this is only a static image in this blog post, on the actual detail page, you can hover over elements of the chart and get more details.

This new view is the graph that I added to the page. It translates the poll average into the chances of each candidate winning the state based on the methodology detailed in that January blog post.

So, in this example, as of right now, Biden has a 7.1% lead in the poll average, which translates into a 98.8% chance of Biden winning the state (or a 1.2% chance of Trump winning). I show the axis labels for the Democrat's chances on the left, but if you prefer, the axis labels on the right show the Republican's chances.

While the first chart does a great job at showing in an absolute way where the polls are, this second chart gives a better idea as to what this means for who is probably going to win and shows how much changes in the poll average do or do not change those odds.

When looking at the state detail page, these two charts are side by side for easy comparison:

Looking at this example makes clear that the "Weak" category is still pretty broad! That 3.8% Trump lead in Texas translates into a 91.4% chance of Trump winning!

Remember though the following important caveats:

As mentioned above, this is "if the election was today." It does not take into account how polls may move in the time between now and the election. Until we get right up to the election, this is very important. Poll averages can and do move quickly. A few weeks can make a huge difference (as shown by the last few weeks before the 2016 election). In the over 500 days we have left at the moment, the world could change completely!
I base the odds estimates on the aggregated performance of the Election Graphs averages in 2008, 2012, and 2016. It is possible that those three elections will not be representative or predictive of 2020. As they say in the investment world, "past performance is not a guarantee of future results."
For the moment, Michigan is the only state where the Election Graphs average is based only on 2020 polls. For the rest, I'm still "priming" the numbers with election results from 2000 to 2016. Only 13 states have any 2020 polling at all at this early stage, and most of them have three or less. So we still have pretty sparse data.

Of course, in addition to the state detail pages for individual candidate matchups, there are also the charts on the comparison page:

Above is the traditional poll view.

And then the odds based view. The idea is the same as the view for the individual candidate pairs, but of course, you see all five of the best-polled candidate pairs and can compare how they are doing.

Now, all of the new graphs are on state-level views. What about national? How does this roll up into an overall picture of the election?

Well, it is coming but isn't ready yet. As I described in my January 30th post, you can use these state-level probabilities as part of a Monte Carlo simulation to generate some information on the national picture.

I don't have any of that automated and live yet on the site yet, but I have started to build some of the elements. So here is a preview of the kinds of information this will produce.

First, looking at the odds of winning for the five best-polled candidate pairs (with all the caveats I mentioned above) based on the current Election Graphs averages and 1,000,001 Monte Carlo trials each:

Biden 87.3% to Trump 11.9% (0.8% tie)
Sanders 74.9% to Trump 23.7% (1.5% tie)
Warren 66.1% to Trump 32.0% (1.9% tie)
Harris 58.9% to Trump 39.0% (2.0% tie)
O'Rourke 48.6% to Trump 49.7% (1.7% tie)

These stats differ a little bit from simply looking at the "expected result" where each candidate wins every state they lead in, or looking at the tipping point metric, as these also look at how likely it is that the various close states end up flipping and going the other way. So this should provide a bit better view of what might happen than those simpler ways of looking at things. But of course, that comes at the cost of complexity and being a bit harder to understand.

Another kind of view that will come out of this is looking at the range of possibilities in a bit more sophisticated way than the "envelopes" already shown on the site. Looking at Biden vs. Trump as an example:

Median Result: Biden by 52 electoral votes
Central 1σ (68.3% chance): Biden by 106 EV to Biden by 6 EV
Central 2σ (95.4% chance): Biden by 158 EV to Trump by 30 EV
Central 3σ (99.7% chance): Biden by 218 EV to Trump by 66 EV

So, sometime in the next few weeks, I'll probably get these textual stats added to the live site and automatically updated when I add new polls. After that, I'll try to get some visualizations of both the current state and how that evolves up on the site, but that will take longer.

Anyway. Coming soon.

522.8 days until polls start to close!

For more information:

Biden strong again in PA, while O'Rourke falters

Since the last update, there was a new Quinnipiac poll in Pennsylvania.

This resulted in status shifts for Biden vs. Trump and O'Rourke vs. Trump.

Biden vs. Trump:

PA has moved from Weak Biden to Strong Biden
Trump best case vs Biden has changed: Biden 230 to Trump 308 -> Biden 250 to Trump 288

O'Rourke vs. Trump:

PA has moved from Weak O'Rourke to Weak Trump
Tipping point change: Trump by 0.1% in VA -> Trump by 0.5% in FL
O'Rourke vs Trump expected case changed: O'Rourke 266 to Trump 272 -> O'Rourke 246 to Trump 292

Lets look at some of the relevant charts:

The Quinnipiac poll is the fourth Biden vs. Trump poll in Pennsylvania. The last one, from WPA Intelligence, is looking like an outlier at this point. As with the last post, I will link to a great thread on Twitter by Charles Franklin that explains why this is not entirely unexpected.

The average is currently made up of three polls showing a 7% to 11% Biden lead, one poll showing only a 1% lead, and the 2016 election, which was a 0.7% Republican win. The three polls showing strong Biden leads are enough to pull Pennsylvania back out of the swing state category for now with a 5.6% Biden lead over Trump.

Based on historical Election Graphs average accuracy, this translates into a 93.2% chance of a Biden win.

Meanwhile, this is the third O'Rourke vs. Trump poll in Pennsylvania, and none of them are great for O'Rourke. The best of the three has him ahead by only 1.6%, and the other two have him losing to Trump. Adding in the 2016 and 2012 elections to round out a five poll average, O'Rouke is now behind in Pennsylvania. Trump leads by 0.5%.

Based on historical Election Graphs average accuracy, this translates into a 59.8% chance of a Trump win.

Looking at the comparison view with all of the five best polled Democrats against Trump, you can see that Biden is once again doing better than any of the other Democrats, followed by Sanders, Warren, Harris, and finally O'Rourke.

For those counting, this now puts Biden as doing better than the other Democrats in 9 out of the 13 states where there has been Biden vs. Trump polling. That's 69.2%. Not quite the 83.3% he had a week ago, but still notable.

Looking nationally, the "expected case" where every candidate wins every state where they lead in the Election Graphs average, this now puts O'Rourke in the worst position of these five Democrats against Trump, losing to Trump by 46 electoral votes. Biden does best, winning by 30 electoral votes.

The tipping point also shows O'Rourke doing the worst of these Democrats, with the tipping point being a 0.5% Trump lead in Florida. On this metric though, Sanders does best, leading Trump by 1.0% in Iowa.

In both of these metrics, we have Biden and Sanders very narrowly leading Trump, while Trump very narrowly leads O'Rourke, Warren, and Harris.

But all five races are very narrow. We've got a long way to the election still, and lots of states with little or no polling, but for now, the story is still that this could easily go either way.

537.1 days until polls start to close.

For more information:

Texas and Pennsylvania close, Iowa flips red

Since the last update, there have been poll updates in Florida, Iowa, Texas, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. These new polls were all part of a single release from WPA Intelligence, and they ONLY polled the Biden vs. Trump matchup.

There are several caveats about this polling. For more on that, I'll point you to a great thread on Twitter by Charles Franklin, Director of the Marquette Law School Poll where he goes into the details.

Election Graphs tries to include everything though, without any fancy weighting, so a poll like this can make some waves. So let's look at what Election Graphs status changes came out of this polling.

Due to Iowa:

IA has moved from Weak Biden to Weak Trump
Biden vs. Trump tipping point change: Biden by 1.2% in CO -> Biden by 0.3% in OH
Biden vs. Trump expected case changed: Biden 290 to Trump 248 -> Biden 284 to Trump 254

Due to Texas:

TX has moved from Strong Trump to Weak Trump
Biden best case vs. Trump has changed: Biden 358 to Trump 180 -> Biden 396 to Trump 142

Due to Pennsylvania:

PA has moved from Strong Biden to Weak Biden
Trump best case vs. Biden has changed: Biden 250 to Trump 288 -> Biden 230 to Trump 308

We'll look at the national charts first, then dig into the state charts.

The most significant impact on the "envelope" is that it has widened significantly. Texas and Pennsylvania are now "in play," and just a few days ago Arizona started looking close too.

The difference between the case where all the close states go to Trump (a 78 electoral vote margin in Trump's favor, coming close to replicating Trump's 2016 margin), and the case where all the close states go to Biden (a 254 electoral vote margin in Biden's favor), is now huge.

There are lots of electoral votes in swing states, so there is a wide range of reasonable possibilities here.

At the same time, the middle line, showing where we are if both candidates win precisely the set of states where they are ahead in the poll average, gets closer. Biden still leads, but by only 30 electoral votes.

At the moment, this looks to be a very close race.

The tipping point chart shows this as well. The tipping point is the margin in the state that puts the winning candidate over the top. That is now Ohio, where Biden leads Trump by 0.3% in the current polling average.

As a comparison, on election eve in 2016, Clinton led Trump by 1.6% in the tipping point metric. And she lost.

Adding to that, given the historical performance of Election Graphs poll averages, an 0.3% Democratic lead ends up being only about a 48.8% chance of the Democrat winning. Given how actual election results have gone vs. the Election Graphs poll averages, the Republican is more likely to succeed when the Democrat leads by this narrow a margin!

Now, I don't have simulations in place yet for the full general election to produce odds there (maybe that will happen sometime in June if I get enough free time to do that), but with the tipping point this close to zero, and the envelope being so broad, things are clearly too close to call.

Now, let's look at some of the individual states, first with Biden vs. Trump only, then we'll compare to some of the other candidates.

In Texas, the new poll, showing Trump leading Biden by 7%, is the most favorable of the four surveys done in Texas so far, but along with the others, it confirms a race much closer than the historical average of a 16.1% Republican win from the 2000-2016 elections.

This change was enough to tip the state into "Weak Trump" territory. With a 3.8% lead in the average though, this still translates into a 91.4% chance of a Trump win.

In Pennsylvania, this is only the third Biden vs. Trump poll. This poll shows the closest race yet and brings the average for the state back near the historical average election performance. Which of course means it is back in "Weak Biden" territory after a brief foray in the "Strong Biden" zone. Given the historical accuracy, this 4.5% Biden lead becomes an 88.6% chance of a Biden win.

Once again the best poll result for Trump out of three, and once again a large range in recent polls. This time the average gets pulled from just barely Biden, to just barely Trump.

Before we start comparing to other candidates, one more state to highlight:

Biden vs. Trump in Michigan now has FIVE polls. This matchup/state combo is the first to have a full five data points, meaning the polling average is based only on actual polls and is not being "filled out" using previous election results.

Presumably, this will be happening more and more often now, but this is the first.

Now, this set of polls ONLY looked at Biden vs. Trump, but it moved how Biden was doing relative to the other Democratic contenders in terms of how they fare against Trump.

Before this set of polls, there had been Biden vs. Trump polling in 12 states: MA, MI, NH, WI, NV, PA, OH, IA, NC, AZ, TX, SC.

Of those states, Biden did better against Trump than the rest of the "best polled" candidates in all except New Hampshire and Michigan.

So he was better than the other Democrats in 83.3% of the states where there was polling.

Let's see where he is after these six polls:

In Texas, Biden continues to do better than the other Democrats. So still 10/12.

This survey is the very first poll in Florida, so the other candidates still show up as the average of the last five elections. But the new data point makes Florida a bit redder, so Biden is not doing better than the others here now. So 10/13 now.

In Pennsylvania, Biden had been doing better than the rest, but now he ties with Sanders and Warren. So now 9/13.

Michigan WAS one of the two states where Biden wasn't doing better than the other Democrats. Now he is. So 10/13.

Biden had been doing best in Wisconsin. Now Warren does better. 9/13.

Biden had been doing best in Iowa, now both Sanders and O'Rourke do better. So we are now at 8/13.

8/13 = 61.5%. So of the individual states where there has been polling, what HAD been a very consistent story of Biden doing better than everyone else against Trump has slipped considerably.

A quick look nationally:

The "expected case" where each candidate gets the states where they lead in the Election Graphs average, no more, no less, still has Biden winning by a 30 electoral vote margin, while Sanders only wins by 6 electoral votes, and O'Rourke, Warren, and Harris all LOSE to Trump by 6 electoral votes. So Biden is still slightly ahead here.

In the tipping point though, Biden now leads by 0.3%, which is better than O'Rourke, Warren, and Harris, who all lose by 0.1%. But Sanders leads by 1.0%.

So by this metric Sanders is doing better in the national race than Biden against Trump.

So what does this mean? Biden being ahead on the electoral vote margin, but behind on tipping point, essentially means that while his expected winning margin might be more, that lead is much more precarious.

Of course, as I said before, Clinton had a 1.6% tipping point lead and lost. So with all of these tipping points, the bottom line is that this still looks like a very very close race.

No matter which Democrat you pit against Trump, it looks like a dead heat.

And there is no longer a convincing case that any one of those Democrats is doing distinctly better than the others against Trump.

Can I put this in terms of percent chances of winning for each of the Democrats when matched against Trump? No. Not yet. But I'll be working on it.

Stay tuned. Everything is wide open.

539.8 days until polls start to close.

For more information:

Biden makes Arizona close

Since the last update, there have been polls in Texas and Arizona.

Only Arizona resulted in a blog-worthy change.

Namely, the Biden vs. Trump matchup moved from "Strong Trump" to "Weak Trump."

The two polls we have so far on this matchup in Arizona have Biden doing significantly better than Democrats have fared here in recent Presidential elections. The latest one shows Biden ahead.

Given these results, the average is moving in the Democratic direction, but given Arizona's history, it would take more polls to pull the race into blue territory. For now, Biden will have to settle for the state being in reach as Trump's lead drops under 5% to 3.2% which improves Biden's "best case" on our bubble:

The case where Biden wins all the close states, now including Arizona, is the downward bump in the bottom right of the "envelope of possibilities" shown above.

Now, Democrats shouldn't be too excited about Arizona yet.

This week Election Graphs has added "win probabilities" based on the data shown in the "Polling Error vs. Final Margin" post back in January. Basically, given the history of how Election Graphs poll averages have matched up against actual election results in the 2008 to 2016 elections, I produce an estimate for the chances of each outcome given the margin. You can now see this on any of the state detail pages and state comparison pages.

At the "Republican leads by 3.2%" level this gives an estimate that Trump has an 87.7% chance of winning Arizona, leaving Biden with only a 12.3% chance. Now, this is non-trivial. But Trump still has a pretty substantial advantage, until or unless more polls come out confirming a Biden lead.

A few caveats since this is the first time I'm referencing this type of calculation:

These "win chances" are based on the past performance of Election Graphs averages, and past performance may or may not be a good indicator of future results.
The model represents "if the election was today." It does not take into account the probabilities of the polls moving one way or another in the time between now and the election.
Since there are only two polls of this matchup in this state so far, only 2/5 of the data points included in the average are even real polls as opposed to results from previous elections.
It is still a long, long time until the election. Things will change.

But still, this is a fun new number to look at, and I'll be referring to the "win odds" more often as new results come in. There will also be new visualizations of this metric coming soon. And while so far I've only added this information on the state detail and comparison pages, the intention is, of course, to use this as the basis for a Monte Carlo simulation of the national race in the way I mentioned in the January "Predicting 2016 by Cheating" post.

Stay tuned.

In the meantime, back to Arizona for a bit.

As has been the pattern in poll after poll, Biden is doing better against Trump than the other Democrats. You can see above that so far Biden vs. Trump is the only one of the five best-polled candidate combinations where the Democrat is polling dramatically different than the historical election result average in Arizona.

Biden looks like he makes Arizona competitive.

The others, not so much.

Finally, just a quick look at Texas as well:

Unlike Arizona, in the case of Texas, ALL FIVE Democrats are doing significantly better against Trump than the historical election average. But that average was much more Republican to start with, so even with the polling averages moving in a Democratic direction, none of the five Democrats put Texas into swing state territory yet.

Biden, as usual, is doing best. Trump only leads Biden by 5.6%.

Using the new probabilities feature on Election Graphs, this translates into a 2.1% chance of Biden taking Texas.

545.7 days until polls start to close.

For more information:

Warren improves in Wisconsin

Since the last update, there have been new general election polls in Nevada, Massachusetts, Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin again.

With this new batch of polling, Harris vs. Trump supplants Booker vs. Trump in our "five best-polled matchups" that we spend time talking about here. Those five at the moment are Biden, Sanders, O'Rourke, Warren, and Harris. All vs. Trump of course.

But of all of those polls, only the last Wisconsin poll resulted in any category changes for any of the candidate pairs. That would be Warren vs. Trump, which moves from Weak Warren (a Warren lead less than 5%) to Strong Warren (a Warren lead more than 5% but less than 10%).

Keep in mind that the average here still includes election results from 2008 to 2016 to "baseline" the state while we don't have enough polls for a meaningful average based solely on the candidate pair. There are still only two actual Warren vs Trump poll results in Wisconsin. So as with everything at this stage, things are still very very preliminary.

The Warren vs. Trump "bubble" now looks like this:

This change makes the scenario where "Trump wins all of the close states" weaker. But note that the center line (every state goes to the current leader in the poll average) still gives the election to Trump over Warren.

Of the five best-polled matchups at the moment, Biden and Sanders beat Trump. O'Rourke, Warren, and Harris all lose to Trump.

All five of these matchups are incredibly close though. These are all tossups, with Biden doing just a smidge better than the others.

We are more than 18 months out right now, lots will change before the election, so these aren't predictions — just statements of how things look today.

In addition to the big picture stuff above, a quick look at all five states with polls since the last update to see not just the category changes, but the movement within the categories.

In Pennsylvania, Biden has a "strong" lead against Trump (6.3%). All the rest are in the "weak" category (less than 5% ahead of Trump). Of these, O'Rourke does the worst.

Wisconsin is one of the better-polled states so far. O'Rourke and Sanders have weak leads (less than 5%) over Trump, while Warren, Biden, and Harris now are classified as "Strong Dem" (more than 5% but less than 10%) over Trump. Biden's lead is not what it once was though, and now Michigan joins New Hampshire as one of the few states where Biden is not doing better than the other Democrats. Harris leads Trump by 6.5% compared to Biden's 6.4% lead. OK, yeah, close enough to not be a difference that matters. But given that it is such a rarity, it is worth noting.

In Massachusetts, all five Democrats have solid leads (more than 10%) against Trump. Biden does best. Warren does worst.

In Wisconsin, O'Rourke and Harris have leads in the "weak" category. Biden, Sanders, and Warren have leads in the "strong" category. Biden is doing best against Trump. O'Rourke is doing worst against Trump.

In Nevada, all five Democrats lead Trump weakly. Biden does best. Warren does worst.

That's it for now.

558.1 days until polls start to close on Election Day 2020.

For more information:

Biden Looking Strong in Pennsylvania

Since the last update, Emerson released a new poll in Pennsylvania.

This new poll resulted in the following changes:

Biden vs. Trump:

Biden vs. Trump state category change: PA has moved from Weak Biden to Strong Biden [Chart]
Trump best case vs. Biden has changed: Biden 230 to Trump 308 -> Biden 250 to Trump 288 [Chart]

I'm starting to feel like I keep repeating myself, but the story of the state level polls so far continues to be Biden doing better than other Democrats against Trump. The newest update is just the latest poll to move things in that direction.

Looking specifically at Biden, the "envelope" looks like this at the moment:

The upper side of that chart shows the optimistic side for Trump dropping from a 106 electoral vote win to only a 38 electoral win as more and more polls show Biden with more strength than the simple average of the last five elections would have predicted.

Looking at some of the other candidates as well, we see this trend is not universal at all.

Biden and Warren have improved in this view, while Sanders and O'Rourke have gotten weaker. Booker hasn't yet moved this metric.

Finally, let's look at just Pennsylvania:

Biden ahead of the pack as usual, and the only one in "strong" territory against Trump. Sanders and Warren are also stronger than the "starting point." Nobody has polled Booker in Pennsylvania so far. O'Rourke though is looking weaker.

585.2 days until polls start to close.

For more information:

Sanders and O'Rourke in the Midwest

Since the last update, Firehouse/0ptimus released three new polls in Pennsylvania [20 EV], Michigan [16 EV], and Wisconsin [10 EV] resulting in the following notable changes in Election Graphs status:

Sanders vs. Trump
- Michigan has moved from Strong Sanders to Weak Sanders
- Wisconsin has moved from Weak Sanders to Strong Sanders
- Trump best case vs. Sanders has changed: Sanders 220 to Trump 318 -> Sanders 214 to Trump 324

O'Rourke vs. Trump
- Michigan has moved from Strong O'Rourke to Weak O'Rourke
- Trump best case vs. O'Rourke has changed: O'Rourke 216 to Trump 322 -> O'Rourke 200 to Trump 338

Biden vs. Trump was the only other candidate pairing looked at in these polls, but no category or tipping point changes resulted.

Before I show all the relevant graphs, I thought I'd show another comparison for these three candidate pairs. Let's look at the current spectrum of the states:

Click through on any of these to look at the specific numbers or details. The point here is to look at the overall pattern though. You can see here how at the moment as you move from Biden to Sanders to O'Rourke, Trump gains strength, moving more states from Weak Dem to Weak Trump, and more areas slip from Strong Dem to Weak Dem. There is even one move from Strong Trump to Solid Trump (Texas).

This is just another view of the theme that has been present in all the Election Graphs update posts so far: Biden doing better than other Democrats against Trump. This situation will very likely change. The other candidates will get more exposure, and name recognition factors will fade. But that hasn't happened yet.

OK. Now to graphs.

On the national level, Trump's "best case" changed against these three candidates. Best case is perhaps a misnomer here, as 2016 showed, it is possible for a candidate to do better than the "best case" described here, which is merely the candidate winning all of the close states. But doing better than this best case is enough of an outlier to be a surprise. So it still serves as a good reference for the upper end of likely outcomes.

Looking at the Trump best cases only, not the "expected case" or "tipping point" that we usually spend more time looking at, Trump does best against O'Rourke, followed by Sanders, then Booker, then Warren, then finally does worst against Biden. (As usual, I am looking only at the five best-polled candidate pairs.)

Finally, a quick look at the comparison charts for the three states included in this latest batch of polls. Remember only Biden, Sanders, and O'Rourke were in this batch of polls.

Pennsylvania was a mix with Biden improving, while Sanders and O'Rourke did worse.

Trump improved against all three in Michigan.

All three Democrats improved their position in Wisconsin.

And yet again Biden is doing better against Trump than the other Democrats in all three states.

587.0 days until polls start to close on Election Day 2020.