I haven’t posted here in a while, and I do so these days only when I see a “narrative” in the news which I believe to be misleading and one which nobody seems to be correcting or clarifying ...
I’m a Biden supporter (well, leaning that way, but I also like a number of our other candidates) and I wanted to write a small diary here just to clarify some of my thoughts re. the recent Wisconsin poll from Marquette University, link below:
law.marquette.edu/...
I have made many comments re. this poll on various other political sites in the last few days, and so I’m sort of just putting my thoughts together here in one diary … Again, these are just random thoughts, and the purpose of this diary is really to invite a discussion from others ...
I believe there’s a strong chance Wisconsin will be the tipping point state in 2020, so whether our nominee wins it or not will be crucial. On the surface, it appears that there’s a great difference in the Marquette poll in how Biden and Warren perform in the general election — Biden leading Trump by 9, while Warren and Trump appear tied at 45% ...
Well, yes, I believe that as of now, Biden does perform better, BUT, when you look at the crosstabs of the poll, you realize that Warren may wind up doing significantly better than it appears here … It's true that Biden does better than the other Democrats including Warren, but it may only be by a few points, and not really the 9 point difference between Biden and Warren everyone has been pointing to ...
First thing, the poll summary rounds up all the numbers ... When you look at the actual crosstabs, the precise Biden v. Trump percentage is 50.6 - 42.5 (which is really an 8 point lead, not 9); for Warren it's a lead over Trump of 45.3 - 44.6 (actually 44.55, but whatever, either way it's closer to a 1 point Warren lead than a perfect tie with Trump) ...
Much more important than the above, imho, is the actual Trump number: when facing Biden it's 42.5, Sanders 44.5, Warren 44.6 (or 44.55), Harris 44.1. In other words, against Sanders, Warren and Harris, Trump performs almost exactly the same (Biden does a little better).
As others have pointed out, how do we interpret the other number, i.e., what each Democrat is getting (50.6 Biden, 48.1 Sanders, 45.3 Warren, 43.8 Harris)? There's obviously more undecideds; is it a function of name recognition? ...
Parts of the poll point towards Biden just genuinely doing better than the others; for example, he has a significantly better lead among independents (49-40) than Warren (42-45). Other parts, though, do point to something like name recognition. For example, among black voters, Biden has 84% support, for Warren it's only 69% with a lot more undecided/don't know …
Perhaps, the most interesting way to compare Biden and Warren is by looking at the Wisconsin “regional” breakdowns. Here we see how they do in various parts of the state. In many geographical areas there’s surprisingly little difference (considering the toplines of the poll, i.e., Biden over Trump by 9; Warren tied with Trump) in how Biden and Warren perform. For example, in the Milwaukee suburbs, Biden loses to Trump 41-52, while Warren loses by 38-53; in both instances, Trump’s number is 52 or 53 …
In other areas, it APPEARS that Biden is doing a lot better, but is he really? Looking at Milwaukee itself, Biden beats Trump 66-26, while Warren wins by 55-27. What’s interesting is that Trump’s number is, again, basically the same here (26 or 27), but in Warren’s case, there’s just a lot more “don’t know”, 13% for Warren, but only 1% for Biden. For Milwaukee, this also dovetails with the other data point, race, where Biden has 84% support among African-Americans while Warren only has 69%.
Similarly to Milwaukee, the numbers for Madison have Biden beating Trump 62-30 (with 1% “don’t know”), while Warren is 55-32 (with 7% “don’t know) … The Madison numbers, imho, are very counter-intuitive, and to me, the most perplexing part of this poll. Perhaps others here could shed more light …
The Green Bay/Appleton area appears to be the only part of the state where Biden’s numbers vs. Trump are solidly and significantly better than Warren’s. Biden loses to Trump by 42-50, while Warren loses 34-55 (the “don’t know” numbers are very similar for Biden and Warren).
Finally, in the “rest of the state” (most of rural and small town Wisconsin), there’s almost no difference in performance, with Biden beating Trump 56-39 and Warren beating Trump 54-39. The fact that both Biden and Warren beat Trump in this region is, imho, very encouraging.
So, bottom line, yes, Biden does better in Wisconsin, but perhaps not by as large a margin as this poll seems to imply when you first look at it.