The under-the-radar polls that also look pretty brutal for Trump
Congressional district and legislative polls also tell us what's happening in this election.
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Last week, I spoke with Tom Jensen, the director of the firm Public Policy Polling, about the phenomenon of “panic porn” we see comparing the 2020 election to the 2016 election.
Jensen highlighted a key difference that his firm is finding in its 2020 polling compared to the work it was doing in 2016. Four years ago, Jensen said, he started to get nervous about the presidential contest from state legislative polling. PPP found that Hillary Clinton was trailing Barack Obama’s numbers in those legislative districts in places like Michigan and Pennsylvania.
“I kind of rationalized to myself that it was OK, because it must just be other districts that weren’t the ones we happened to be getting hired to poll where Hillary was doing better than Obama had and those must even things out,” Jensen told me. “Well, that was not the case!”
This year, however, PPP has done 66 legislative polls in states including Michigan, Minnesota, North Carolina, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. Jensen said it was “remarkable” how consistent the difference is: Joe Biden is performing 6 to 8 points better than Clinton. The shift is happening in areas we hear a lot about, like highly educated suburban districts. And it’s happening in places we hear less about, like rural areas where Biden is preventing President Donald Trump from running up the score like he did in 2016.
It’s worth exploring this phenomenon more as we enter the stretch run of the 2020 campaign—and as Biden takes what this week looks to be an expansive lead. A comprehensive look at state legislative polls, like what Jensen was discussing, is hard to find publicly. But we can glean a lot of insight from looking at polling of US House races, which are following a similar pattern to the type of shift Jensen highlighted.
With help from FiveThirtyEight, I surveyed 30 US House polls, all of which were released in September or October. I used The Daily Kos’ comparison of presidential results for 2012 and 2016, which is organized according to congressional district lines that are in place for 2020.
Together, these polls paint a clear picture. It’s not just the national and state polls. In these closely watched districts, Biden is performing better than Clinton by an average of 9 points. (You can see a further breakdown of the polls in this spreadsheet.)
To Jensen’s point, these districts constitute a variety, at least according to their presidential voting patterns—Obama to Trump, Romney to a slightly smaller Trump win, Romney to a much bigger Trump win. One thing is consistent: Joe Biden is doing significantly better in all of them. A few of these districts tell the story best.
The blue state, swing district
Twelve-hundred years ago, when most people thought impeachment was going to be a flashpoint in this election cycle, Jeff Van Drew became one of the most famous members of Congress in America.
Van Drew, a Democrat from New Jersey’s second congressional district until December 2019, defected from the party line on the House vote to impeach Trump. The next day, he announced he was switching parties.
“I believe that this is just a better fit for me,” he said.
More and more, it’s looking like he was wrong.
Looking back, it’s easy to see what Van Drew saw: A rapidly changing district, swinging from a comfortable win for Obama (8 points in 2012) to a 4-point victory for Trump. Now things have swung back. Three recent polls have Biden leading in the district by 4, 5, and 5 points, respectively.
The most recent poll is from New Jersey’s own Monmouth University, which found several brutal underlying numbers for the president in the district: His approval rating is underwater by 6 points. Only 40% of voters view him favorably, compared to 52% of voters who view him unfavorably.
As for Van Drew? He’s also losing by anywhere from 5 to 7 points, according to different turnout models from Monmouth, to Democratic opponent Amy Kennedy.
The swing districts in the swing states
That’s all well and good, you might say, but it’s also New Jersey, which has gone blue every cycle since 1992. Let’s take a look at some districts from the Garden State’s neighbor.
The commonwealth of Pennsylvania was one of three major coups for Trump in 2016. Along with Michigan and Wisconsin, it makes up the “blue wall” that crumbled four years ago. But there are plenty of signs the Keystone State could be swinging back this cycle: Biden is ahead by more than 6 points in the current FiveThirtyEight average of the state’s polls.
Two congressional districts stand out in recent polling: the 7th and 10. I should note that Pennsylvania’s map was redrawn by the state’s Supreme Court in 2018. Had the 7th district existed in 2016, Clinton would have won it by about a single point. Had the 10th district existed, Trump would have won it by almost 9.
Biden is leading in both districts—by a more comfortable, 7-point margin in the 7th district and by surprising, 3.5-point average in the 10th. Both districts exhibit Biden’s relative strength with white, working-class voters, on whom Trump relied to carry him to victory. Both districts are at least 79% white, with slightly lower-than-average percentages of college graduates.
In the 7th district, at least (that poll has crosstabs!), Biden is tied among white voters. He’s blowing out Trump among voters with a college degree (61-35), but he’s also keeping it close among those without a college degree, trailing by only 7 points.
A new swing?
Texas has emerged as Democrats’ new white whale. They’ve been talking up a “blue Texas” since at least 2012. And though it’s unclear if this is the year, Texas, at least right now, is certainly more of a battleground than states like Pennsylvania. Trump leads by less than 2 points in the latest FiveThirtyEight polling average there.
Texas has a few interesting districts. Perhaps the most representative is the 10th, where Republican Michael McCaul has served since 2005. He is the chair of the powerful House Foreign Affairs Committee. Yet he is facing a significant challenge, leading by only 2 points. That’s because the district has gradually but rapidly become more Democratic, as it includes both the Greater Austin and Greater Houston regions.
Mitt Romney won there by 20 points in 2012. Trump carried it by about 9 points in 2016, as Clinton cut the deficit by more than half. Biden appears to be closing the rest of the gap: A poll released at the end of September showed it a tie race within the district.
The district “is a reflection of what is happening around the country as voters of color and college-educated voters are forming a powerful Democratic coalition that is transforming districts that have been held for years by Republicans and are now becoming Democratic,” the pollsters wrote.
It’s happening in Texas. It’s happening in Pennsylvania. It’s happening in Arizona. It’s happening in Florida.
All of which to say is, the latest widening poll gap on the national and state levels for Biden does not appear to be a mirage.
“Four years ago all the battleground legislative polling was really giving me some pause about what was going on,” Jensen said. “This time almost every single one of those polls is reinforcing to me the feeling that the state of the Presidential race is fine.”
Thanks for reading Margin of Error. If you have any tips, comments, or insights about polling, email me at bplogiurato@gmail.com, or find me on Twitter @BrettLoGiurato.
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