October 26, 2020: There are only eight days left for voters to cast their ballot in what will certainly go down in history as one of the most unusual or amazing election years.
Polls throughout the year have shown former Vice President Joe Biden leading President Trump by a generally modest margin.[1] However, after the failure of media analysts to recognize that 2016 polling showed a much closer than expected race, many voters are skeptical in 2020.[2]
The thing that is keeping me up at night as a pollster is the mail-in vote. It is extraordinarily pro-Biden. As a result, if the mail-in totals are even a bit lower than projected, the race might be a lot tighter than it appears.
From my perspective, there are three main areas of concern—for pollsters and the Biden campaign:
- Will younger voters really get their ballots in the mail? As a group, they are not enthusiastic about Biden, but many loathe Trump. Will that be enough? That question is made all the more difficult by the fact that younger voters never use snail mail in their normal daily routine.
- In recent years, 1 to 1.4% of mail-in ballots have been rejected for various reasons. Given that many people will be voting by mail for the first time this year and that many states have no history of mass mail-in voting, the rejection rate could be much higher. That could be very significant in a key swing state like Pennsylvania.
- Finally, voters who are less comfortable with the English language may have a harder time filling out their ballot properly.
Any or all of these factors could result in a smaller number of mail-in ballots being cast than pollsters like me are currently projecting. Since these voters strongly prefer the Democratic nominee, such an outcome would mean Biden’s lead is smaller than anticipated.
On the other hand, it may be nothing more than a data fear to keep pollsters up at night.
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