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.

I’ve made this point a few times in recent weeks, here and on the podcast. I’m going to make the point again because I think it’s critical for understanding this election nine days out. We keep hearing that this is the closest election in decades. Polls say that’s right. At least 5 of the 7 swing states are within a single percentage point — fairly meaningless margins statistically. National poll averages are between one and two points — right on the cusp of where most believe a Democratic Electoral College victory becomes possible. But I don’t think that’s the right way to look at it. What we have is a high uncertainty election. That’s not the same thing. There’s every chance that most or every race that looks close will veer more or less uniformly in one direction. And that wouldn’t necessarily be because of one late-breaking story, some great decision by one of the candidates or even undecideds all “breaking” in one way. It could simply be because the dominant understanding of the race and the electorate was just a bit off and had been all along.