Quote:
Originally Posted by EldrickOnIce
No, I recall correctly
Etc
I agree, national polls mean nothing, but let's present it accurately
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That Quinnipiac poll was taken in August. Quinnipiac did a September poll in 2016 that showed Clinton up only 5 points and polling under 50%.
In the first week of September RCP reported the following polls:
Quinnipiac 9/8 - 9/13 48 43 Clinton +5
Reuters 9/8 - 9/12 40 39 Clinton +1
LA Times 9/5 - 9/11 44 44 Tie
NBC News 9/5 - 9/11 48 44 Clinton +4
ABC/WP 9/5 - 9/8 51 43 Clinton +8
YouGov 9/4 - 9/6 44 42 Clinton +2
Reuters 9/1 - 9/5 40 38 Clinton +2
CNN/ORC 9/1 - 9/4 48 49 Trump +1
That is a very different scenario. Apart from one outlier in the high single digits almost every pollster (including Quinnipiac) had the race well within the margin of error. If we go a week farther out we saw a few polls (including one from Fox News, which is actually a very reliable pollster) that showed Trump slightly ahead.
I’m not saying Trump is for sure not going to win but based on polling averages Biden is in a much stronger position than Clinton was around the same time in 2016.
And you’re right: at the end of the day the problem for Clinton was in a handful of swing states, including Wisconsin and Michigan—which in 2016 had only about 4 or 5 polls each for the entire election season, which makes extrapolating from a polling average much more in exact (and the race showed as pretty close anyway). But if we are going to remember 2016 let’s also recognize the ways in which 2020 is quite obviously different.