USC Daybreak Poll Deep Dive Looks Promising
Lots can be said about the USC Daybreak Poll. Nate Silver doesn't seem to be a huge fan. But that being said, the poll offers some useful info if you want to go deep. So let's go deep.
Keep in mind that USC interviews the same 5000 group of people every 14 days in a 1/14 sample per day rotation. Let's assume their initial methodology was wrong and Biden really isn't leading by +11. Who cares? It's still a great tool to show how people are changing their minds and general volatility.
First takeaway shows an insanely different story for election volatility. The 2016 USC poll was nuts--all over the place. 2020, solid as a rock. Biden leading by 11 pretty much the whole way. See for yourself.
2016 Crazy Volatility
https://dornsife-center-for-political-future.usc.edu/past-polls-collection/2016-poll/
2020 Snoozefest
https://election.usc.edu/
Obviously Access Hollywood and Comey were major players in this volatility for 2016.
For 2020, Biden picked up support after Trump's Walter Reed visit but then lost it during the brief laptop nonsense. Other than that, zip movement. We are where we started a few months ago.
Second takeaway is that because USC shows how these people actually voted, you can see hard number trends.
The internals from two weeks ago show an interesting trend for Trump abstainers. Dems were voting Biden for president, but a lot of women Republicans were voting for nobody. Independents were also sitting on the sidelines and abstaining in huge numbers. But Indies still gave Biden an advantage of around 5%.
But..... 20% + of R women who already voted in the USC did not vote for president at all. (You have to do a little extrapolation and the sample is small but it's there)
This opens the door to a very plausible scenario that I haven't read much about. Yes, Biden picks up maybe 5% better crossover voters and he does better with independents. But the real story might be this year that an unusually large number of R women voters may skip filling in a presidential bubble and not vote for president at all. This would make it all but impossible for Trump to win. It also explains his stupid-ass begging for suburban women voters on the stump.
Men (and I'm an man and I should know) continue to suck, choosing Trump by a huge margin. Ridiculous.
So the USC poll tells us that the race is not volatile. The other polling we see--especially the partisan or low quality outfits--varies because of methodology.
Trafalgar, by the way, literally changes responses from Biden to Trump. They figure that if someone answers all other questions as if they were a Trump voter but say they will vote Biden, they will change their preference back to Trump. I simplify, but literally they do this.
The Upshot? Stable race. No tightening. Biden is doing slightly better with crossover voters and Indies. Women hate Trump. R women are abstaining. And white men, (that's me) F*CKING SUCK.
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