If you watch CNN you’ll no doubt be hearing a lot about their new poll from the most annoying data analyst on television, David Chalian. It shows Trump beating Biden 49-42 and this will almost surely end up being the narrative going into the next week.
Don’t listen. It’s an outlier:
There is also a new CNN poll today showing Trump with a 49-43 national lead. Given that dozens of other national polls have shown the race within the margin of error and many have shown Biden gaining or with leads THIS CNN POLL IS AN OUTLIER and should be treated that way by CNN and other commentators.
Any attempt to use the CNN to guide one’s understanding of the election given that dozens of other polls are showing a completely different race (tied) would be journalistic and/or analytical malpractice. A few months ago the Washington Post published a poll that they considered an outlier, and acknowledged it in their article about the poll, pointing out that their data was different from many other recent polls. CNN and other commentators should do the same with this poll.
This race is inexplicably tight to be sure and Trump may well be marginally ahead. But this is ridiculous.
As Larry Sabato says here:
I did want to flag some truly astonishing results from that CBS poll which has me contemplating tequila before noon. It’s generally a hopeful poll which shows MI, PA and WI essentially tied. But take a look at a few of the crosstabs.
Right, sure.
That’s just not true.
Delusional.
Is there some kind of collective brain damage causing this amnesia?
Trump has been saying he had the greatest economy the world has ever known on a loop for the past three years. Apparently a large majority of Americans believe him. The truth is that he inherited a strong economy that was able to withstand some of his daft ideas like the Chinese tariffs while Biden inherited a massive economic and public health crisis that happened on Trump’s watch and brought the country back in record time, doing much better than any other advanced economy in the world. But sure, Trump was better. He sat on his ass and tweeted and let Obama’s economic momentum carry him.
If he had won in 2020 you can bet we would be mired in recession right now because he and his cult were determined not to extend the stimulus and would have instead offered some more tax cuts for their rich buddies and put Jared in charge of the supply chain chaos. I’m pretty sure the vaccine program would have been a nightmare as well so we could probably count on another half a million deaths or so as well. It doesn’t bear thinking about.
But sure, everything was great under Trump and has been hard under Biden. That’s because he had to fix the horrific mess that Trump left him. I guess that’s too long ago for people to remember. It was three long years ago.