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:

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.

Sanders and O'Rourke in the Midwest

Since the last updateFirehouse/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.

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.

The First 2020 Polls

A few days ago I looked at where all the states ended up if you just look at the average results of the last few elections. No 2020 specific data.

But there have already been state level 2020 polls. Sixteen by my count. They are now all included on Election Graphs.

When I do updates here, unless there is a strong reason to do otherwise, I'm going to only discuss the five "best polled" candidate pairs. At the moment, the only Republican polled so far has been Trump. (Sorry Weld fans.) The five best polled Democrats against him right now are Biden, Warren, O'Rourke, Sanders, and Harris… in that order.

So with that out of the way, let's start looking at some graphs!

The chart above shows the "expected" electoral college result for each of these five candidate pairs, assuming each candidate wins all the states they lead in the Election Graphs five poll averages. This average still includes previous election results since there are no states where there are actually five polls yet.

So what do we see? From the very limited polling we have so far, we see Biden doing noticeably better than any of the other four Democrats when pitted against Trump. In the electoral college, Biden leads Trump by a 42 electoral vote margin. Sanders leads Trump by 6 electoral votes. And then Warren, O'Rourke, and Harris all lose to Trump by 6 electoral votes.

The "tipping point" is perhaps a better way to look at things. It is similar to looking at a popular vote margin, but adjusted for the structure of the electoral college. Here Biden has a 1.2% tipping point margin over Trump and Sanders has a 0.9% tipping point margin over Trump, but Warren, O'Rourke, and Harris all trail Trump by an 0.1% margin.

Frankly, ALL of these results, for all five possible opponents to Trump, are firmly within the "too close to call" zone. Even if it was the day before the election, not 607 days before the election. With this much time left, and with the extremely limited polling so far, any patterns we see may easily disappear as new polls come in. It might even be safe to say they will probably disappear. It is still very very early.

Having said that, the Biden advantage is even more striking as you start looking state by state. The following charts show how the polling average in each state has moved as the polls so far have come in.

Note: Keep in mind these are all measuring how each of the Democrats would fare against Trump in the general election, NOT how they might fare against each other in the primaries.

Watch the red line. The red line is Biden. Down is better for Democrats.

OK, in California Biden hasn't broken out. He hasn't actually been polled in California yet. So his average is just the average of the last five presidential elections.

Biden doing better than the other four Democrats in Texas.

Biden doing better than the other four Democrats in Ohio.

Biden doing better than the other four Democrats in Michigan.

Biden doing better than the other four Democrats in North Carolina.

Biden doing better than the other four Democrats in Arizona.

OK, none of the top five have been polled in Minnesota yet. (Only Klobuchar has been.) So they are all still on one line.

Biden doing better than the other four Democrats in South Carolina.

Biden doing better than the other four Democrats in Iowa.

OK, we finally have a state where Biden has been polled and he isn't doing better than the other Democrats. In New Hampshire, both Sanders and Warren do better against Trump than Biden does.

But that is it. Out of 10 states where we have state polls so far, Biden does better than the other four Democrats in 7. In 2 Biden hasn't been polled yet. Only in 1 does another Democrat do better against Trump.

Now, to be clear, at this stage in a Presidential race, this may be due entirely to name recognition. Most people may still not have much of an idea who Warren, O'Rourke, and Harris even are. But surely they would know who Sanders is, right? His name recognition must be comparable to Biden's. Right?

In any case, the way Biden consistently is outperforming other Democrats against Trump in the polls so far is striking. And he hasn't even officially said he is running yet.

It will be interesting to see if this pattern continues as the field starts to gel, and the other candidates get better known.

Election Graphs will of course update as the new polls come in…

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 they are added. If you find the information in these posts interesting or useful, please consider visiting the donation page.