Here it is, due to popular demand, the latest episode of Inside TPM with executive editor David Kurtz. How did he come to join TPM? How does he approach the Morning Memo? What does an executive editor do? How does this election differ from others? Who will win the World Series? We go through it all, and more — hope you enjoy.
I’m seeing more and more data points and testimonials – from both sides of the aisle – that the Democratic ground game in multiple states is superior to the Republican one, in many cases by a substantial degree. Now it’s Republicans who are starting to say it. For Republicans saying this is itself a get out the vote effort, warning of the danger to shake more Republican voters loose and get them to the polls. But looking at it in toto I think they’re saying it because they mean it.
We’ve discussed repeatedly in recent months how poll results aren’t just “the numbers” in some hard, incontestable sense. They include a set of assumptions about the nature of the electorate. For most TPM readers, this is a fairly straightforward point that doesn’t require much convincing or explanation. But this post by a professor at Vanderbilt provides a really helpful real-world illustration. Josh Clinton takes sample data and shows that by using different reasonable and good faith assumptions about the electorate he can get results ranging from Harris +.9 to Harris +8. Don’t pay attention to the fact that these results are all still in her favor. The point is that the assumptions baked into the poll can yield results 7 points apart. It could as easily be Trump +3 to Harris +4. Again, it’s one thing to understand this in the abstract. But the specific explanation and the concrete outputs tell the story in a different way.
If nothing else, this is why that 7 point spread is just a bright flashing neon light that many of us are disregarding or not even seeing while we’re obsessing about win or loss margins of like half a percentage point.
