Presidential Polls Are THIS Close. Can You Trust Them?
Plus, Cubans faces catastrophic nationwide power blackout
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Good morning,
Happy Hour: A beloved American pastime or an old-school activity that Gen Z is confused by 🤨? New York restaurateurs say it’s kind-of both.
Eugene Remm, co-founder of Catch Hospitality Group, said, “People used to work from 9 to 5. And you were happy at 5:01 because your workday ended.” But since the COVID-19 pandemic, when many Gen Zers began their careers, “there is no beginning of work and there is no end to work.
He guesses that 95% of 20-somethings who would have typically gone to happy hour if it was ten years ago, would now look at someone asking them to go to one and say, ‘Hey, Boomer, I don’t know what happy hour is.'
At the same time, Gen Z is also just drinking less than previous generations.
Some perspective from our in-house Gen Zer, Lauren: Young people in NYC work late, so meeting friends on a weeknight will usually be for dinner and drinks. However, when I lived in Washington, DC, the HH culture was still booming post-pandemic lockdowns.
Have a good one!
Mosheh, Jill, & Lauren
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📌 POLLING SAYS PRESIDENTIAL RACE IS DEADLOCKED, BUT ARE THEY ACCURATE?
Two weeks to the election and there are a lot of questions about whether the polls are accurate: Right now, Vice President Kamala Harris has a one-point lead over former President Donald Trump in national polls. Accounting for a margin of error, it’s basically a tie. Notably, Harris’s polling has dropped a bit since the Democratic National Convention in August, when she led Trump by five percentage points.
First, a quick breakdown of how polling works. We are often asked, ‘how can a poll of 1,000-1,200 voters be reflective of about 335 million Americans?’
The soup metaphor: CBS News Elections Director Anthony Salvanto says we need to think about polling like making a pot of soup. Pollsters put ingredients in that they think will accurately reflect the voters who will likely show up on election day (A certain number of carrots, noodles, celery, etc. You get the point!).
They then use a spoon to taste the soup. As long as you have an accurate recipe, and then mix up the soup to ensure you get a spoonful (1,200 likely voters) that is reflective of the pot, you don’t need to drink the entire pot (335 million Americans) to ensure you get an accurate taste!
OK, now we are hungry. Let’s get back to the numbers.
RECENT POLLING PROBLEMS
In both 2016 and 2020, battleground state polls overcounted likely Democratic votes. So, if this cycle’s polling error is like the last two presidential elections, Trump has a consequential lead at the moment.
But, wait. During the 2022 midterms, the polls overcounted Republicans. So if there is a similar polling error, Harris is currently in a very good position to win. [Note, that was a non-Trump election year.]
In 2016, pollsters underestimated Trump’s support in key swing states.
We remember the headlines after Election Day:
While the national poll accurately measured Hillary Clinton winning the popular vote, we all know that the US elects presidents via the Electoral College, with a handful of swing states making the difference.
At issue in 2016 was that battleground state polls also showed Clinton winning the electoral vote. Later analyses show that the state polls overestimated likely voters with a college degree and underestimated voters without one. That was a huge issue, as there was a surprise divide along educational lines, with Trump dominating among voters without a college degree.
Fast forward to 2020. National polls accurately predicted Biden’s popular vote win, but state-level polls were even further off than 2016, again skewing in favor of the Democrats! It just got less coverage since Biden still won.
What went wrong in 2020? While pollsters updated their projections around education, there were a couple other likely issues.
One: A number of Trump voters are not responding to pollsters and skewing numbers.
Two: Pollsters believed that record turnout (22 million more votes) and new voters would skew towards Biden. Instead, new voters split pretty equally between Biden and Trump.
How long the line is shows how much polls underestimated Trump. Via: NY Times.
What it means: The average swing state polling errors for elections going back two decades is about 3%. Given how close the polling margin is right now, that means it is anyone’s guess who might win.
THIS YEAR: Pollsters think they’ve adjusted from the past two presidential elections errors.
Undercounting Trump supporters might seem like liberal bias on the part of the pollsters. However, the errors were not unusual and beyond what we have seen before in both directions. While 2020 and 2016 undercounted Republican votes, 2012 and 2000 undercounted Democratic votes.
Here are the misses from the past nine elections:
Via: NY Times.
WHO’S GOING TO SHOW UP
With the 2024 presidential race closer than any race this century, ultimately, it comes down to who shows up to vote.
Bad weather, a bombshell headline, there are many reasons people get out to vote and even make up their minds in the voting booth.
Something else to factor in this year: More people are voting EARLY than ever before. So the final polls the weekend for election day will not necessarily reflect changing attitudes over the last two months.
Want to know more about how polls are conducted? Mo News spoke with Gallup’s Editor-in-Chief (Apple & Spotify) last year and CBS News' director of elections and surveys around the midterms (Apple & Spotify).
🇨🇺 CUBA’S MASSIVE POWER GRID FAILURES COME AS ISLAND FACES FOREIGN FUEL SHORTAGES
Amid days of widespread power outages, Cuba faced the latest challenge to getting things running again with the arrival of Hurricane Oscar.
Beginning Friday, the island’s entire power grid failed. After a brief restoration, it fully collapsed and plunged the entire country of about 10 million people into darkness. Multiple failures followed in the subsequent 48 hours.
On Sunday night, Oscar’s rain and winds hit the eastern part of the country, making engineers’ work to restore Cuba’s electric grid even more difficult.
About half of Havana’s two million people had regained power by Monday afternoon. But millions of Cubans still face outages, especially in eastern Cuba. The country’s schools and non-essential industries are closed through Wednesday— a near unprecedented move in Cuba.
HISTORIC OUTAGES
The isolated communist regime depends on a handful of other nations to meet their fuel needs. Its grid is made up of decrepit infrastructure that is more than 50 years old. Blackouts lasting 10 to 20 hours a day have already been impacting much of the country for months. Those factors, paired with a lack of investment in other systems, have led to what experts have warned about for years.
Cuba depends on fuel from Venezuela, and Russia and Mexico to feed its largely obsolete, oil-fired power plants.
But with Venezuela’s economic crisis, Mexico’s recent elections, and Russia’s war, the imports have significantly dropped.
Residents are already suffering from severe shortages of food, medicine and fuel. The Cuban government likes to blame a 62 year-old US trade embargo and Trump-era sanctions.
The supplies Cubans get— despite high prices and inflation— can spoil with the outages. There’s been a massive exodus of nearly a million Cubans fleeing the country in recent years.
Videos have popped-up on social media of small protests over the outages. But for now, they do not appear as large as the protests in 2021 from another blackout.
⏳ SPEED READ
🚨NATION
📌 Jury selection begins for trial of man charged in NYC subway chokehold death (NBC)
📌 White House says health insurance needs to fully cover condoms, other over-the-counter birth control (AP)
📌 ‘Central Park Five’ members sue Trump for defamation after his debate comments on 1989 case (CNN)
📌 "Stunning security failures" led to Trump rally shooting: bipartisan report (AXIOS)
🌎 AROUND THE WORLD
📌 Lloyd Austin visits Ukraine as Zelenskyy warns of 'clear' North Korea threat (ABC NEWS)
📌 Lebanon assesses the damage after Israel strikes Hezbollah-linked banks (NPR)
📌 King Charles III heckled on Australia visit by lawmaker accusing him of complicity in Indigenous genocide (CBS NEWS)
📌 Moldova backs joining EU by razor-thin margin as president condemns ‘assault’ on democracy (CNN)
📱BUSINESS, SCIENCE & TECH
📌 Trump has promised to protect Social Security. His proposals could lead to benefit cuts in 6 years (CNN)
📌 Hugh Hefner’s son wants to buy Playboy for $100 million (NY POST)
📌 Women may wait 30 minutes longer than men for pain relief, study finds (WASHINGTON POST)
📌 Chick-fil-A is releasing its own entertainment app, with family-friendly shows and podcasts (CNBC)
🎬 SPORTS & ENTERTAINMENT
📌 Liam Payne had multiple drugs in body at time of death, sources report (ABC NEWS)
📌 Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs named in 7 new lawsuits; other celebrities allegedly involved (CNN)
📌 Olivia Nuzzi exits New York Magazine after internal review over RFK Jr. affair (THE WRAP)
📌 Taylor Swift sends Barstool’s Dave Portnoy handwritten letter thanking him for support after Harris endorsement (PEOPLE)
🗓 ON THIS DAY: OCTOBER 22
1962: In a national address, President John F. Kennedy alerted Americans to the Cuban missile crisis, revealing that a Soviet-built missile base was under construction in Cuba and declaring a naval blockade to prevent further missile shipments to the nation 90 miles off the US coast of Florida.
1966: The Supremes ‘A' Go-Go' became the first album by an all-female group to reach #1 on the Billboard 200 chart.
2012: American cyclist Lance Armstrong was formally stripped of his seven Tour de France victories and received a lifetime ban from competing after the International Cycling Union chose not to appeal his doping charges.