David Wasserman: The polls could be wrong. But that may help Biden, not just Trump.

[brooklynite]

NBC News

As Election Day approaches and President Donald Trump continues to trail Joe Biden by high single digits both nationally and in key states, their respective bases are buzzing with either hope or dread that "the polls could be wrong again."

In truth, public opinion polls are imperfect instruments, and there's always bound to be some degree of error, especially given the widely varying quality of the nation's pollsters. But Trump would probably need a larger polling miss than in 2016 to win re-election, and there's no guarantee a systemic polling error this year would run in his favor.

First, it's important to remember that in 2016, the final pre-election average showed Hillary Clinton leading Trump 46.8 percent to 43.6 percent nationally, according to leading polling aggregator RealClearPolitics. That wasn't too far off the mark: She went on to win the popular vote 48.2 percent to 46.1 percent, not exactly strong evidence that hordes of "shy Trump voters" refused to tell pollsters their true intentions.

However, an examination of state-level polling reveals a clear and crucial pattern: In both 2016 and the 2018 midterm elections, state polls chronically underestimated Republicans' strength in the Midwest and Florida, and underestimated Democrats' strength in the Southwest.

[Marius25]

1. Wasserman just tweeted that Biden is likely to win next week.

[beachbumbob]

2. no magical hoard of trump voters to found in this reality and trump is capped at 42-44% nationally

and will have no chance to even hit 46% and 3rd party total will be less than 2%. The facts are clear, trump has marginalized his base of support and has driven away I imagine 4-8% with defections of former democrats who voted trump, more women and more white voters. Of course nothing matters if any democrats sit ho,e and/or our votes are not counted


but thats another issue