Analyzing presidential race polls (the bounce + who's going to win?)

want to thank you again for finding us another edition of no stop LS uh as we usually do and and and required to do and should be uh should be our priority is thank our sponsors Francis Mar University Carolina Bank Mickey fins Victors maror pedy Electric Co-op Mcall Farms Pepsi of Florence PLC commercial real estate and McLoud Health um I I've always argued that this is a work in proc progress I don't have with complete Clarity where I'd like this podcast to eventually end up but but we caught a couple of breaks in the last several weeks that have inclined us um to go One Direction Over another we want to share that news with you not today because I don't have um I don't have confirmation from some of the other um sponsors and partners and those who been with us since the beginning of this concept and have allowed us to try and create from concept to fruition what we like this to become and um and we've got a pretty significant announcement I think within the next 30 days prior to the presidential election for sure that um that I think we'll reflect well on our sponsors I think you will be far more interested in the in the end product it won't be a a College Dropout from a town with no stop lot Yapp in his mouth about the world around him and why he's right about everything and and everyone else is wrong but but I am excited about you know where where we were where we are and now I have a little bit of clarity in where I think we're headed and um and I think you will be excited for us when we make uh that more clear answer or more clear announcement so once again um and I'm thinking about it today in particular because we've tried to do a mixture of podcast we've tried to do some on local businesses and there was a curiosity and an interest in some of the businesses and and individual businessmen and women we highlighted uh we've tried to really pay homage to these these corporations and businesses that have so given to the community um today is going to be political this the first podcast we've done um post Labor Day and I've argued other than this year hell um June and July have been pretty dead politically um when I ran for office you win your primary you kind of go and try to raise money you come back after Labor Day and compete tooth and nail in a general uh in anticipation of winning the public support this was a very different sort of year June and July were incredibly eventful in the world of politics um an assassination attemp on the Republican nominee a um a Changing of the Guard with the Democrat nominee but but I still believe that history and and the analytics of campaigning really began taking hold uh post Labor Day and I and I do this with full understanding that I have no idea and I mean this sincerely I don't know I don't know if Francis Mar University is a liberal or or conservative school don't care I don't know if Carolina Banks run by conservatives or liberals I don't know that Mickey fins is run by conservatives or liberals Victors maror p Electric Co-op Mcall Farms Pepsi of Florence PLC commercial real estate ml I don't have any idea the decisions that are made within the confin of that organization are made with a conservative bias a liberal bias supporting Democrats or Republicans uh moderate pragmatist it doesn't matter to me I I don't I'm not guarded by it I'm certainly aware of it and I try to be respectful of the fact that they probably don't want to be too Associated uh with one side of the political debate or the other um but but I think you lose a great deal of your credibility if you have any when you appear to be inauthentic for for sake of making someone happy or or not a little bit nervous about what you may or may not say I think in this world of media today um the lack of authenticity is something that we all pay a price for so I've always tried to keep it real call it like I see it uh let the chips fall where they may and and because this is the first po uh podcast post Labor Day I want to try to give to the best of my ability somewhat of an analytical not a good old boy backs slapping candidates perspective but rather someone who has over the last dozen years or so invested a lot of time energy and effort and understanding how you win campaigns why is this person the favorite why is it more likely for this to happen than that happened I've expressed this over the years I served on County Council and when I got there obviously I thought I was the um the smartest guy in the room and I learned very quickly that five beats four every sing single time no matter how good my idea was how bad the other person's was the one that could get four to go along with their opinion was the one that that you know winners winners make rules and laws losers get angry and filibuster and complain about the rules that are made we are in a very consequential period in American politics I've watched and tried to understand the Trump phenomenon I have great respect for those who don't find it are aren't as sympathetic to the Trump phenomenon as I am I want to reiterate um I don't know Donald Trump I don't have any idea what his character is I don't have any idea what his um uh how a sincerity is I I don't I'm not going to look inside the soul of a man from afar and be judgmental I don't have the capacity to do that he's a flawed man I am most of you are flawed men flawed women we all are but but I've tried to look at this election separate of the personal the personality the the bombass the crassness the the irreverence I think all those are very legitimate concerns and complaints but I think you contrast that with with a burning resentment that many many Americans have for their federal government once again I'm not speaking for the sponsors but I do believe I'm speaking in a very accurate and informed fashion so when I say the American public appear to be very resentful of the government I'm not saying that on behalf of these sponsors I may be saying it at the risk of losing one or two of these sponsors but I do believe these sponsors understand that there's an interest in calling it like you seeing it and looking people in the face I mean in this case in the camera and just kind of um you know here's how we see it so I want to play Carl Rove um Ro is not a big trumpster we know that Ro is an employee of fox a former bushy um he would be more of the neocon establishment Republican e but Carl R is a very smart man very intelligent man and and understands politics at a level that very few people in America do um Carl Rose famous for having a whiteboard I don't have a whiteboard cost too much but I got some poster paper here and a Sharpie and I want to for the next two or three or four or five minutes kind of explain where I see the campaign not from an instinctive and and gut induced position but rather the analytics what are what are the data points what are they saying what are the um what is the modeling and and and and the polling I mean we've got polling coming out every single day I would argue some's credible some not so credible um I pay a lot of attention to some of the pollsters I don't pay much attention to some of the other pollers and then we have these models that forecast what may happen I'll give you an example I wrote down something on this sheet of paper coded convention bounce I mean we're getting the Weeds now the coded convention bounce is a a a data point that a pollster would plug in to a a polling methodology that suggests what bounce the candidate will get post convention historically the Republicans PLL at X and then they get a point point and a half two points depending on how good the convention was and how uh the media received or accepted and uh and told them told the story of of that convention they'll normally get a bounce the the the reason I'm bringing that up and that leads into my kind of an analytic uh dissertation the reason I bring that up is the Oddity of this campaign season was we replaced a candidate that had 14 million primary votes with a candidate that had no primary votes that's unusual that's unprecedented we've never seen that happen before so where do you go to find It's Kind like selling a house where do you find the comp there are no comps to that I me it's never happened in American political history so when when the reason I'm talking about coded convention bounce is if Joe Biden is the nominee and Donald Trump is leading Joe Biden by three percentage points odds are post convention that three-point lead shrinks to a point and a half when you don't have the normal convention when you have an exchange of one candidate for another you don't know how to code the convention bounce you don't know how to anticipate or predict what that convention bounce will be and once Camala Harris became the nominee and Joe Biden stepped aside we can have a debate about why it happened and how it happened and who led the um who led the charge on that side of the political equation but my argument has always been that the convention bounce happened when they replaced Biden with Harris that would have been several weeks prior to the convention so what some of the modeling did that I think was tooo optimistic for the Democrat nominee was they she got a bounce I mean there's no doubt about it when you get rid of an 81y old guy who appeared to be kind of in the winter of Life had some cognitive issues I think most Americans will agree to that you you saw kind of you know an older candidate replaced with a younger candidate and the younger candidate brought some enthusiasm brought brought some energy that the older candidate had not brought and you got a bump naturally I me you would expect that to be bu Democrats became more enthusiastic more optimistic more hopeful of the chances that they had to win the uh the campaign so she gets a bounce before the convention the polling began to project a second bounce and I thought that was a little ambitious I didn't see Harris getting a bounce once again for replacing Biden and a subsequent bounce for becoming the post-convention nominee officially accepting the nomination of the Democrat Party and the leveling off in the polling I believe is because many many of the pollsters not only assigned a value to the changing of the candidate bounce they also assigned probably an equal bounce in the modeling that leads to the polling that that I think overstated her support I hope that made sense I me I'm going in big circles here but but I hope that made sense so so that kind of framed where we headed into labor day um some of the polling reflected two bounces I argued the polling should have only reflected one bounce and now we're seeing kind of a changing of the Mind as to who's the favorite as we enter into the first podcast post Labor Day now here are the factors that I want us to pay close attention to once again you may agree may not agree I may prove to be right may prove to be wrong over the long run but once again I think the reason that it looked optimistic for the Democrats and Harris and I'm a republican but I'm not a homer I'm not a sunshine pumper I'm I'm man enough to call it like I see it but but I still believed and I think the data is beginning to show that the the multiple bounces were were overstating her support and likelihood of winning the race Nate silver at 538 is a mod he's an aggregator he's not a pollster maybe does some polling but his claim to fame is aggregating all these Poes um handicapping how good or bad they are plugging this in I guess to an algorithm somewhere and out of that comes a myriad of models somewhat like hurricane predicting the cone of you know is is more likely to go this way than that way but it could go it could go this way so right now Nate silver who I guess is the most renowned modeler forecaster in American politics he's certainly the most famous modeler and forecaster not a pollster once again I think his claim to fame is modeling and forecasting I checked this morning uh before we did this podcast he has Donald Trump winning 61.3 of a 100 hypothetical presidential campaigns presidential races against Camala Harris he has her winning about 38.6 or seven um and that that's a substantial it's not a slam dunk it's not a a sure thing but it's pretty substantial so when someone says well how 3 weeks ago was Cala Harris at 57 and now she's at 38 Donald Trump was at 43 now he's at 61 I think some of it was the coded convention bounce that never happened and I never thought would but I think the majority of it is we're going to be car Ro here for a second I hope he'd be proud of me um the majority of what I think is happening is as we model forget the poll for a second we're talking about modeling here what is likely to happen in the next two months before we get to November 5th Trump enjoys the benefit of an electoral college bias what does that mean I refer to it as the colorful cinjun Carville correlation James Carville famously said and believes that because of the electoral college bias Donald Trump can lose the presidential popular vote by three percentage points and win the presidency because it's not about the popular vote that's not how we elect presidents we use an electoral college system um the founders thought that was the best way to do it some like it some don't like it depending on which side of the coin you're on but if Camala Harris is up three points in the National poll Trump is tied if Camala Harris is up two points in the National poll because of the electoral college bias Trump is plus one so Trump has a three-point advantage in the electoral college bias because we don't pick a president based on the popular vote that's a feather in his cap that that's wind in his sail that's a data point that helps Donald Trump toward the presidency the other um nugget of information that silver and some of these modelers modelers and forecasters use is Donald Trump since 2016 has outperformed swing State polling by somewhere between two and 2 and a half% it was about the same in 16 and 20 I got no idea what it's going to be in 24 but there's a historical analysis that is used that applied and most of the modelers most of the forecasters rely on that previous information to basically explain what they think is going to happen in Pennsylvania to Arizona Wisconsin Michigan Georgia maybe even North Carolina I mean I think if North Carolina's in play Trump's in trouble but Trump outperforms swing State polling by between two and two and a half points if Nate Silver's aggregating a polls has Trump down one in Pennsylvania he has Trump likely winning Pennsylvania cuz slow with math two to two and a half is more than one pretty hard pretty easy to understand so you got electoral bias electoral college bias in Trump's favor you've got Trump outperforming swing State polling by two two and a half percentage points that is another Advantage um now this is unique to this election as long as Trump's a candidate and a republican in general they're going to enjoy the Electoral College Bas I've got no idea if the nominee were somebody other than Donald Trump how much that Republican nominee would outperform swing State polling this is fairly unique to Trump number one's not number two is this is another uniqueness about this political campaign when asked what decisions or what issues are you basing your decision on the votes for Harris or Trump the majority of Americans by a wide margin are saying immigration inflation and the economy I mean abortions an issue crimes an issue taxes an issue the debts an issue education infrastructure Ukraine uh Israel there's a ass of issues but the majority of American can say when I cast a ballot for president I'm basing it on who I trust on immigration who I trust on inflation and who I trust on the economy and on those three issues in about every poll Trump is five to nine points ahead I think he's six or seven ahead in the Sienna poll he's seven or eight ahead in the RAS M pole maybe as much as nine ahead and some of the Trafalger polling uh ABC Cenna poll is probably a little more liberally leaning Ras M probably a little more conservative leaning but but I've not seen a single poll that doesn't have Trump ahead by a substantial margin on immigration inflation and the economy because of that if you answer that immigration inflation and the economy are the reason that I'm casting a ballot in favor of one candidate over another and you say okay who is that candidate and they answer undecided the the modelers say no they're not undecided I mean if Trump's that far ahead on these three issues that matter most the undecided going to break for Trump maybe they don't want to verbalize it maybe they don't want to admit it I don't I don't know I have no idea why you'd say or not say I'm voting for Trump but but the the data is pretty clear and and I believe and and the modelers believe the modelers agree with me and the forecasters agree that that those undecideds are likely to break Trump's Way by a margin of 10 to 12% that's it's a lot it's a big number but it's not a lot of undecideds I mean this is an election where I would argue there's fewer persuadables than there's ever been the book's written on Trump I mean I doubt there are a lot of people out there contemplating whether or not they're voting for Trump that there's a lot of people out there I think that are contemplating whether they want to vote against Trump conservative-minded people U Believers in the free market may find her policies a little too liberal a little too radical and and reluctantly they come home and vote for the the Republican despite not being crazy about this Republican so because immigration inflation in the economy are the top issues and an undecided say yeah I'm voting but I don't know who for yet but I'm voting based on these three the forecasters and modelers believe that the undecide is break to Trump's Advantage so those are the one two three four um data points one is about any Republican candidate any Republican candidate right now because Ohio and Florida are not in play I mean there was a day Ohio and Florida were very much in play and considered swing States and the electoral college bias may have been dead even may have even favored the Democrat a bit but now you got Florida red you got Ohio red you've um you've got smaller swing States fewer swing States and that has given the Republican an electoral college uh bias Trump is a unique political figure um we call it the lean Trump voters they won't verbalize their support for Trump is that why he still outperforms the poll and will he I don't know don't have any idea um all I can go on 16 and 20 and that's all the forecasters and modelers are going on so in conclusion what does that mean it means to me personally and I think it means to to the Nate Silvers of the world that Donald Trump is far more likely 61 out of a 100 times Donald Trump is going to get to 270 Electoral College votes that's what it takes to get the job I'm going If he if he wins a few swing States loses a few swing states he gets to 270 and wins the job um some of the modelers have Trump's best day at 313 I mean that's Trump taking advantage of the electoral college bias that's Trump outperforming swing State polling by two and a half% that's Trump uh that's the undecided is breaking Trump's Way by somewhere in the neighborhood at 10 percentage points because immigration inflation and the economy are the issues of which of their voting on and they think Trump will do a better job on those three issues now now I would argue if the electoral college bias is Trump plus two if Trump outperformed swing State polling by one instead of two and a half if the immigration inflation economy voters don't break for Trump plus 10 you got a dog fight I mean it's a tossup it's anybody's race you've got the turnout machine of the Democrats you've got the boots on the ground that the Democrats just do a a magnificent job especially in swing states to when they deploy assets and resources they get more bang for their Buck than Republicans do they just do they're just better at it are they more obsessed with wanting to be in charge of government I don't know don't have any idea but historically their ground game is better their turnout machine is obviously better Nate silver I don't know how the forecasters and modelers I don't know how you say okay the Republicans have closed the Gap a little bit on voter turnout in Pennsylvania the Republicans have closed the Gap a little bit on boots in the ground in Arizona I don't know how you assign a number to that maybe they did May maybe they didn't but I just know as we speak today and this is the first podcast post Labor Day we're less than two months away from election day we're probably less than a couple of weeks away from people casting ballots that'll be counted in the November election it looks to me and most modelers and forecasters today agree it looks to me that Trump's path to 270 is more likely than Harris's path to 270 there will be polling fluctuations there will be a debate this Tuesday um I told a buddy of mine who's a big Trump supporter I said it's Trump's still lose but he's very capable of doing it I mean he's kind of a wild card he doesn't always follow the script something like that but there's great risk and someone who doesn't follow Trump's not real good at running the clock out he's just he's not and I'm not saying he has a big enough lead to run the clock out I think they still got to grind and win and I'm not being a homer I want to reiterate I want Trump to win I make no bones about that I'm a former Republican office holder I still support Republicans I believe the Republican party to me offers the best path forward the best vision for America that they're not without flaw um Trump is kind of a byproduct of republic failure over the last couple of um a couple of generations I think at Republicans led the way they sent mailers in the mail and and ran television ads and and radio ads and some of the questions they gave on Meet the Press Donald Trump would have got 2% of the vote he would have exited stage right in 2016 but but I think there was a great misalignment an asymmetrical relationship between the Republican Party prior to Trump getting here and the and the Republican base voter he offered kind of a new flavor some like some don't he brings a lot of the blue collar voter to the table what I call the political non- affiliate they're going to vote but they're not ideologues they're not real interested in whether you are Republican or a Democrat uh what do you say that is very relatable to me and and some say sincere some say's not I don't have any idea once again I'm not going to judge a man's soul from afar what I've tried to do and I guess I did it to good old boy fashion I've tried to analyze the data that we have today and the picture that believe is most accurate today and I think if you look at all this data some is unique to Trump some is about the Republican advantage of the electoral college bias I think it's more likely that Trump gets 270 than it is she does now I'm going if he catches every break and the bias is what the colorful cun Carville correlation says it is if the immigration inflation economy voter break heavier in Trump's Advantage I mean he could get as close as 313 in the elector T College I mean that would be him winning about every state he won in 2016 plus Nevada plus the three that have been reapportioned post 2020 um census he got 20 she got 232 in 2016 if he wins those exact same states he gets 235 the to me the most likely scenario let's say this is half correct I me let's cut these numbers in half I still think 235 holding serve plus Georgia is 251 plus Pennsylvania is 270 so he can win the presidency lose Michigan lose Wisconsin lose Nevada lose Arizona I'm not saying he will or won't but I just think it's multiple ways to get to 270 convince me as we sit today may have a different story after debate or after the debate this coming Tuesday but but as we sit today it is the opinion of yours truly and no toop lights that Donald Trump is more likely than not to be elected president of the United States in November 2024