Updated |
What Went Down At The Fourth Democratic Debate
Farai, do you buy this argument that black Democrats just aren’t familiar with Sanders and that’s why they don’t support him?
As Sanders talks about general election polling, it should be remembered that it is highly un-predictive. Sure, Sanders may end up beating Donald Trump, but the polling right now shouldn’t be used to support that argument. The average error for general election polling at this point is over 10 percentage points.
| POLLING ACCURACY A YEAR BEFORE THE ELECTION | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| ELECTION | AVERAGE GOP POLL LEAD | GOP ELECTION MARGIN | ABSOLUTE ERROR |
| 1964 | -50.3 | -22.6 | 27.7 |
| 1992 | +21.0 | -5.6 | 26.1 |
| 1980 | -15.5 | +9.7 | 25.2 |
| 2000 | +11.9 | -0.5 | 12.4 |
| 1984 | +7.2 | +18.2 | 11.0 |
| 1988 | +18.0 | +7.7 | 10.3 |
| 2008 | -0.3 | -7.3 | 6.9 |
| 1956 | +22.0 | +15.4 | 6.6 |
| 1944 | -14.0 | -7.5 | 6.5 |
| 2004 | +8.7 | +2.5 | 6.2 |
| 1996 | -13.0 | -8.5 | 4.5 |
| 1960 | +3.0 | -0.2 | 3.2 |
| 2012 | -2.8 | -3.9 | 1.0 |
| 1948 | -3.8 | -4.5 | 0.7 |
| Average | 10.6 | ||
Sanders has recently been making an electability argument against Clinton (mostly by citing polling) — is his argument persuasive?