The Upshot on Today's Polls - The New York Times - 0 views
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The big picture. There were a lot of polls Wednesday, and I could go on about this poll or that one. But let’s frame it this way: Was there a single state poll that qualified as good news for the president? Maybe the Ipsos poll showing him down only a point in Arizona? Otherwise, I don’t think so.
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What is going on in Wisconsin? If anything had poll junkies talking, it was the two big and conflicting results in Wisconsin. ABC News/Washington Post, a high-quality pollster, found Joe Biden leading by … an eyebrow-raising 17 points. (Not a typo — or not a joke, as Mr. Biden might say.) Later in the day, Marquette University Law School, perhaps the most trusted pollster in the state, found him leading by five points. You probably expect me to dive in and explain the difference. Unfortunately, I don’t have answers.
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Take the ABC/Post poll. Yeah, it’s a real outlier. Mr. Biden entered the day with a nine-point lead in Wisconsin according to our poll average, and the ABC/Post result is the largest lead in the state by any public pollster this cycle. So no, I don’t think Mr. Biden is “really” up 17 points in the state.
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But that doesn’t mean it should be dismissed out of hand. After all, would you have dismissed an ABC/Post poll that showed Mr. Biden up just one point, which represents the same difference from the average but in the other direction? That would have rightly moved your view of the race toward the president, and this ought to move your view toward Mr. Biden.
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Here’s a bit of trivia: If Mr. Trump won Wisconsin in the end, this ABC/Post poll would be only the second poll of a regularly scheduled statewide general election in the big FiveThirtyEight database of polls since 1998 to show a winning candidate behind by so much in the final three weeks.