-By almost any objective measure,
the polling is incredibly favorable
right now for Democrats.
Joe Biden almost daily gets national polls
that show him 8, 9, 10, 11 points ahead,
and he seems to be also ahead in the averages for the key states
that matter in the upper Midwest and in the Sun Belt.
The problem is, Democrats have been here before.
The polls are actually quite similar
to where Hillary Clinton was about three weeks out in 2016,
and as we all know,
those polls fell apart for Clinton in the final weeks,
and then the polls were also, in some cases, not accurate.
And so there's a lot of trepidation and nervousness
and paranoia among the Democratic ranks right now.
There are a couple things to think
about when you're looking at the polls.
First, national polling is not how you win
a presidential election in the United States.
You have to win the electoral college,
which is a state-by-state contest.
And given that many of the most populous states,
places like New York and California,
are so heavily Democratic,
the national polling results right now in this country
tend to be more Democratic than the electoral college results.
And that's why both campaigns are really looking at polls
in places like Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona,
Florida, North Carolina to determine
where this election is going to go.
-A lot of people ask us, "What happened in 2016?
And what does that mean for polls in 2020?"
In 2016, there were many polls done in battleground
states in the Midwest.
And a lot of those states didn't weight to education.
So in a lot of these Midwestern states
where polling was conducted
and they didn't weight to education,
Hillary Clinton looked like she was winning in those polls
because voters with college degrees
were more likely to vote for Clinton
than voters without college degrees.
So they overemphasized what her lead looked like
because there were more college- educated people in those polls.
-And so this year, I have, like, a lot of skepticism
for state-level polling and national-level polling.
But even with that skepticism, it is a really good polling year
for the former vice president Joe Biden.
He looks very strong both in the national polls
and in state polls.
I mean, just as an example of how true this is,
Biden has a stronger lead in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania,
and Michigan than Trump does in Texas
or South Carolina, which is shocking.
Like, just to say that out loud feels wrong,
and yet it's so true, you know.
And so the thing that we're basically
trying to figure out is, A, how many of the pollsters
have made systemic changes to their methods
and their models as a result of 2016?
And the answer is many.
And then B, how much do we need to be careful
about inferring state-level success
from those big national polls
where Biden is, you know, up 9 or up 10 points?
-So we're just now releasing a "Washington Post"
average of national polls and polls
in several different battleground and key states.
And we choose different polls that are released publicly
to include in these averages.
And that includes polls that meet certain standards
that we've set up.
-In 2020, one measure of this race that's very different
is that polling is much less important.
Something like 35 million votes
have already been counted in the United States.
The early voting tide is enormous,
and what this does, effectively, is lock in voter preferences
from much earlier in the cycle.
So there are voters who were casting votes in September
and October, before we've even had a chance
for any of these, like, October surprise-type moments --
you know, the President getting coronavirus
or whatever new thing is gonna come next week.
Many of those things would be considered to be,
like, late-breaking movers for these people who are,
you know, making last-second decisions.
But now those folks have already voted,
and a lot of them have already voted.
Their votes are locked in, and it's already gone.
-What we know from the polls right now
is that Joe Biden is winning both nationally
and in a number of these states.
In a second category of states
that include places like Iowa and Ohio and Florida, Arizona,
it's basically too close to call at the moment.
But he does have statistical leads in a number of places.
It's not at all clear, though,
that that's going to be the final outcome.
These polls are snapshots
of where the country's at right now.
They do not predict elections.
So I think voters have to keep paying attention
to where the polls go and acknowledge after reading them
that, you know, the final result may be a few points off.