Tracker Update: Where Things Stand as Biden Officially Enters the Race

Just a quick update today along with some thoughts on how I might modify polling data at some point in the future.


(Hello there Eric Swalwell, you're now in the Tracker!)  We've had a nice spread of updates across most of the data inputs: new national and early state polls, an update to CNN's power rankings, some new endorsements, and of course the ever changing betting market.  Biden, Sanders, and Buttigieg all got improved poll numbers this week.  Warren and O'Rourke are jockeying for position behind Buttigieg.  Otherwise things are pretty much status quo.


So, now that I've been following these numbers for a couple of months, I'm feeling more dissatisfied with the model's overall ability to capture the current state of the race (which as I've said before is my primary goal, this isn't about forecasting).  I'm mainly unsatisfied with simply taking the polling data at face value.  We all know that this early in the race, most people haven't made up their minds about a candidate, and pollsters are basically forcing a choice on people who aren't ready to make it.  There's some value in who people choose when they have to, but there's a lot more value in other potential measures, such as who people have a favorable or unfavorable opinion of, who people are considering or who they've ruled out, etc.  538 has had a couple of good pieces on this recently, one being a survey of political activists that asks both who they're considering, and who they would not like to see win the nomination.  They've also looked at how name recognition factors in to poll standing.

Meanwhile, a fresh YouGov/Economist poll asks a larger survey sample who they're considering.  Just a few numbers from that:  Biden is at 46%, Sanders at 43%, Harris 35%, Warren 34%, Buttigieg 32%.  These approaches don't give us a neat precise number of who's leading the race like the traditional polls do, but they do shed much clearer light on who's in the running and the overall state of the race.  I've started playing around with some ways to incorporate these types of data into the overall tracker model here at Hats In the Ring, but I haven't settled on anything yet.  I expect sometime over the next couple of weeks though I will release a version 3.0 of the Tracker.  Stay tuned!

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