Posted on by Californiacontrarian

An Outlier

Granted I am for Trump as I think that if Biden gets elected the US is going to be in for, as Toni Fisher sang in her 1959 song, The Big Hurt . . . which starts out, “Now it begins, now that you’ve gone.”

In general I am familiar with the fact that “the polls” are predicting a Biden victory . . . meaning that across the US Biden will get more votes – similar to 2016 where Hillary got more votes. However, as we all know by now, the election will be decided on the number of electoral votes a candidate gets. In 2016 Hillary won the overall popular vote, whereas Trump won the Electoral College and thus he won the election.

In 2016 one polling group was an outlier, and correctly predicted the outcome of that election. This was the Trafalgar Group, who had the best poll in five of the battleground states in 2016, and actually predicted Trump to win 306 to 232 in the Electoral College.

So I researched what that particular polling group was forecasting for 2020. 

Most of what follows is from the National Review, and is basically what the Trafalgar Group is predicting about the upcoming election.

First of all Trafalgar is different from other polls in that it asks far fewer questions (7-9 instead of 25) and does not depend solely on live phone calls. Also Trafalgar does not use relatively small sample sizes of less 1000, and it discounts national polls.

So how does Trafalgar see the 2020 race? 

Fundamentally, as a motivation race, rather than a persuasion race, with perhaps 1.5 percent, at most, of the electorate undecided in battleground states. 

Trafalgar goes through the battleground states one by one, and overall Trafalgar sees another Trump win. “If it all happened right now,” Robert Cahaly of Trafalgar maintains, “my best guess would be an Electoral College victory in the high to 270s, low 280s.”

There it is. Among pollsters, you heard it from Cahaly and Trafalgar  first, and perhaps exclusively — a position it’s been in before.

At this point we can only vote and hope.

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