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Important Clarity on Party ID Regarding Independents and Unaffiliated

I'm not sure the Locals crowd needs this to be said, but I'm going to repost here what I wrote on X about this topic, with a bit more detail.

It started when Sean Trende on RCP attempted to warn people about modeling the independent vote solely using polling data. His points, particularly his main point, is very true. Here's what he said:

"If you're trying to model "Independent" voting, polls are of limited use. Remember that depending on question wording, context, and pure randomness, "Independent" can mean (among other things): Registration, how people think of themselves, or voting tendencies."

Original Post URL: https://x.com/SeanTrende/status/1852718833548620274

More to his point, how someone refers to themselves by party when speaking to a pollster or an exit pollster can be entirely different than their actual voter registration record.

It's how Trump, for instance, can win Hyde County, North Carolina, when it was majority Democratic in registration. The same is true for most of the 31 counties that voted for Obama, then Trump in 2016 and again in 2020, as well as cause of sharp swings in Appalachian Western Pennsylvania and Northeastern Pennsylvania counties.

If you polled a registered Democrat in Hyde County, NC, who supports Trump, they're very likely to tell you they're an independent, rather than identify with their actual registration. Voter registration is more static and lags, changing over time to follow more consistent and fluid trends in party identification.

It's very tricky to use polling data ONLY to model "indies" if the pollster didn't data append to the voter file, as we almost always do, so they know party registration.

Here, let me show you how this can be observed in a real situation.

The following is from a poll that we conducted in Utah and it was appended, otherwise known as matched or deduped, to the voter file.

The first image is the self-identification question, the one you're all familiar with from any poll you see on Real Clear Politics (RCP).

The second image is the result of the data append, or again, matching to the voter file.

As you can see, when polled 43.2% of the sample self-described as Republican, 31.3% as Independent, 18.0% Democratic and 7.4% as Something Else.

But the data append showed that the registration record by party for the very same sample was actually 50.9% Republican, 17.1% Democrat, 14.9% Independent American, and only 12.2% Unaffiliated, etc.

When people talk about polls, they always assume Independent means Unaffiliated, and visa versa. That is not really the case. Sometimes we get lucky, but often we do not. It's yet another reason why I stress "sampling errors for subgroups are higher" as much as I do.

But the bottom line, a lot of these micro "models" floating around attempting to project the margins using polling data by independent vote ALONE are not really better than a good guess.

In reality, it's far more complicated than that, unfortunately for me. Other demographics tell us about who these people are and how they're likely to vote regardless of having no two-party registration, such as age, race, sex, etc.

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My Polling Is "Nothing But a G-Thing Baby"

I feel like tearing off my clothes and dancing in the rain (snow on Tuesday). Ofc I'm entirely too old to do that. But...

We were SO right.

Here's Snoop, who rapped "F--K Donald Trump" in 2017, now performing at a Trump supporting inauguration party.

00:00:45
Holiday Fundraiser Winner Drawing

Here it is!

Unfortunately, none of us won it. But you all raised $345 for dancers on the team. Here is my daughter and two of her team members doing the drawing for the winner.

Ofc, we got their parents' permissions to show them.

Thank you all!

00:02:06
Mitt Romney Bids Farewell to the U.S. Senate

Mitt Romney bids farewell to the U.S. Senate, potentially marking the end of an era for Rockefeller Republicanism.

00:08:09
Barnes and Baris Episode 29: What Are the Odds?

Watch Live 3:00 PM EST — Robert Barnes and Rich Baris discuss in detail bombshell results within the Public Polling Project for Early Spring 2021, and more civil unrest amid the trial of Derek Chauvin for the death of George Floyd.

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Barnes and Baris Episode 29: What Are the Odds?
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How Trump's Union Support Could Prove Vital in 2024
Trump's Rank-and-File Roundtable with Teamsters Is Smart and Fitting
On Wednesday, President Donald Trump met privately with Teamsters General President Sean M. O’Brien ahead of a rank-and-file roundtable this month. In a post on X (formerly Twitter), the influential labor organization said it was "an in-depth and productive discussion on worker issues most important to the Teamsters Union."
 
“There are serious issues that need to addressed to improve the lives of working people across the country, and the Teamsters Union is making sure our members’ voices are heard as we head into a critical election year,” O’Brien said. “We thank the former President for taking time during this private meeting to listen to the Teamsters’ top priorities. And we are eager to bring together the rank-and-file for an important and necessary roundtable with President Trump this month.”
 
Democratic users and influencers on the social media site were quick to criticize the union in a flurry of replies and quote reposts. But while X is "real" as opposed to "fake" in a broader context, it is hardly representative of an electorate or even an organization.
 
So, what does the data say about the viability of this potential relationship?
 
In 2016, the then-Republican nominee for president did very well with unions, more specifically private sector unions. National Exit Polls (NEP) conducted by Edison Research found Hillary Clinton carried union households by just 5 points, 51% to 46%. President Trump carried all non-union households by a 6-point margin, 48% to 42%.
 
But in 2020, Democrats leaned on leadership to put the screws to rank-and-file members, much like they are in the replies here, and union support for the then-incumbent eroded. In our most recent poll conducted in December, all union households told us they voted for President Biden over President Trump 57.5% to 36.6%, a nearly identical margin (56% to 40%) published by the exit polls. Given subgroup sampling errors are higher, it's more than safe to concede the result is representative.
 
In addition to collecting surface-level data on union versus non-union households, BIG DATA POLL also collects data by union type: public, private, and both (dual). For the record, non-union voters back President Trump over President Biden 52.5% to 47.5% after essentially splitting their vote in 2020, a result also identical to the exit polls.
 
Private sector unions who claimed to have voted for President Biden 54.6% to 37.0% now only back him 51.5% to 48.5%, a significantly narrower margin fueled by both a decline in support for the current president and a significant gain in support for the former. The margin among all union households is starting to more closely resemble 2016 than 2020. Considering the survey overstated support for the Democratic candidate, there is a good argument to make that President Trump is now performing even stronger against President Biden than he did against Mrs. Clinton among union households.
 
While public sector union voters obviously are more likely to maintain support for President Biden—still backing him 57.8% to 42.2%—his advantage is slightly narrower than the 59.6% to 36.9% edge he held over the former president in 2020. Moreover, dual households actually break for President Trump 53.1% to 46.9%, though sample size for this subgroup is small. Undecideds voters from all three household types actually break for the 45th President when leaned.
 
President Trump has reportedly committed to another roundtable sit down with rank-and-file Teamsters, General President O’Brien, and General Secretary-Treasurer Fred Zuckerman in January. The event will be held at the Teamsters’ international headquarters in Washington, D.C. Despite what social media interactions might suggest, the data clearly indicates this is a no-brainer.
 
The International Brotherhood of Teamsters has more than 1 million members nationally and a not-so insignificant number in several key battleground states. Further, the organization has known its fair share of government persecution, fair and unfair. Politics make strange bedfellows and we've seen stranger. But in this case, a potential relationship would not only seem to be a good fit, but a politically smart move.
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Polling Misinformation Alert: 'Unskew' the Polls Returns
Partisans Desperate to Explain Away Pro-Trump Trends Violate Key Industry Norms

Watching people attempt to "unskew" polls conducted by all walks of this industry—ranging from Nate Cohn at The New York Times to Spencer Kimball at Emerson College to Tim Malloy at Quinnipiac—all to deny Donald Trump's gains against Joe Biden with various voting blocs, is more than a little sad.

The slew of recent polls over two weeks—to include no less than four today alone—have simply confirmed prior findings published from other pollsters who have previously been "unskewed". That includes your's truly and our work at BIG DATA POLL, Mark Penn at Harvard University, Patrick Ruffini at Echelon Insights, and many others.

I'm temped to equate this with an Occam's razor-like situation. But this debate is more about likelihood than simplicity.

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A Commentary on the Presidential Vote Preference Trend, 2020 - Present
Biden v. Trump in 2024 is NOT the Same Race as 2020

Here's the Presidential Vote Preference Trend for Biden v. Trump going back to August 2020. The Public Polling Project did not begin asking the Rematch Question for 2024 until September 2021. However, we can still make some pretty important and interesting observations.

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