Interesting three party race results

[DemocratSinceBirth]

Link to tweet

Three points.

!) In a three way race Dems stay loyal to Dems and Reps stay loyal to Reps and Indys migrate to Indys
2) A lot of the Indy vote could potentially collapse once names are affixed to the candidacies
3) It still gives me pause, the way the Indy vote comes at our expense.

[lark]

1. Very scary stuff.

Russia definitely knows this and used it against us in 2016 and will do the same in 2020 - see Schulz, and there will be more to come.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

3. Indy support will likely collapse when actual candidates are known.

That being said the Indy draws five votes from us for every one vote from Trump is concerning.

[Garrett78]

2. 3rd party candidates almost always poll much better than they ultimately perform.

[Maru Kitteh]

4. Stomach churning. I wonder if anyone currently running for D would be so egotistical

as to blow up the world because, you know, maybe they call Democrats "opponents" fairly often?

Oh, and it's all about them.

[Awsi Dooger]

5. You should be able to recognize that as garbage

It's like Rachel Maddow grinning while waving a poll in the air with Hillary nearly tied in South Carolina, and actually believing the numbers.

There is no such thing as a 5/1 split. It wouldn't be a 2/1 split. Every gambler I know would pounce on absurdity like that immediately.

Likewise there is no such thing as an 11 point Democratic lead over Trump. That race would be life and death right now. We would have only a small edge.

It reminds me of all the absurd polls last fall with Bill Nelson and Andrew Gillum leading handily. I have studied political math since 1992 and am not beholden to stupidity that does not match the foundational realities. It is the reason I have laughed at every Alaska poll for nearly 20 years. I can't believe Nate Silver was actually sticking those Alaska polls into his database without recognizing how inept the model was. He finally caught on and wrote a long related article about terrible Alaska polling in 2015.

I do agree that the left leaning independents are very soft. This poll has them shifting wildly to a third party candidate. That would not happen. But the reason Trump has more opportunity than conventional wisdom allows is that those independents are very moody and susceptible to reluctantly returning to the incumbent, if factors merge in his favor like a strong economy and a Democratic nominee who has not fared well during fall 2020.

Our fate is basically in the hands of those independents who favored Trump in 2016 and then shifted immediately away from him in early 2017. We are not going to dominate on intensity or turnout or any of the other garbage Happy Adjustment toys. The other key variable is how the Hispanic vote settles. As I've mentioned they have history of strange loyalty to the incumbent. We need to nominate someone who can prevent that from happening in meaningful numbers.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

6. The academic who performed that poll predicted Dems

The academic who performed that poll built a model in June that predicted the Dems would win 42 seats. It looks like they won 41 so she has that in her favor.