TAKING A BREAK UNTIL AFTER THE FIRST DEBATE



Isn’t this just like the 2012 “unskewers” that predicted Mitt Romney would win?

Another thing to consider is that Obama overperformed the final polls in 2012, which is evidence that Obama had some of the “monster voters” that I discuss in this article. This time, if anyone gets “monster voters” who pollsters tend to underpredict, it’s going to be Trump – i.e. Trump is more like Obama, Hillary is more like Romney.

Instead of multiple posts, this will be a page with poll analysis, updated periodically.

“Unskewing” formula:

Party 2012 ID 2012 Turnout ID/Turnout 2016 ID 2016 projected turnout Democrat 35 38 1.086 30.0 32.58 Republican 30 32 1.067 27.7 29.56 Independent 33 29 0.879 40.6 35.69

So I took the 2012 party ID / 2012 turnout, and then multiplied the turnout for each group by 2016 party ID. This gives the projected turnout for each group in 2016.

Then when I see a poll, I look for party ID breakdowns, and weight how Republicans, Democrats and Independents respond to pollsters. I then weight the responses of each group based on the above projected turnout.

Party ID is from Gallup.

Analysis of all August Polls of Huffpo Pollster that had party ID breakdowns, and Rasmussen, LA Times and Dornsife.

Rasmussen and USC/Dornsife are included because they have transparent methodologies: Rasmussen strictly weights by party ID, USC/Dornsife tracks a population which are a representative sample of voters in the 2012 election (i.e. percent that voted for Obama vs. Romney). The LA Times tracking poll describes their methodology thusly:

Results are weighted to match demographic characteristics, such as race and gender, from the U.S. Census Current Population Survey, and are aligned to the 2012 presidential election outcome using self-reported votes in that election.

Italicized numbers are adjustments made when only the weighting data of a poll is given, but not the full party ID breakdowns (i.e. how many Republicans plan to vote for Trump, Hillary, etc.), and based on previous polls, I simply give Trump 0.9 points for every point weighting of democrats above D+3, as I believe the general election will be D+3. For state polls I use the gallup numbers instead.

National Polls

Using only polls with an end date in September

Effect of my adjustments: Trump gains 1.32 points

Battleground polls have a quick and dirty weighting for party ID. I presume 36% Independents, and the remaining 64% split by Democrats and Republicans. I then use Gallup’s party ID/Lean by state, and add 2/3 of the difference between Democrat and Republican to whoever has an ID advantage.

Wisconsin (D+3)

Poll Unadjusted Numbers Unadjusted Gap Adjusted Numbers Adjusted Gap Marquette 8/25-8/28 41-38 H+3 N/A N/A Monmouth 8/27-8/30 38-43 H+5 39.74-42.54 H+2.8

Michigan (D+5)

Ohio (0)

Pennsylvania (D+5)

Virginia (D+1)

Nevada (0)

Florida (D+3)

New Hampshire (R+3)

North Carolina (D+2)