Biden is Ahead .... But, Don't Sleep on Trump
Trendency: After a four-point decline last month, Biden bounced back as Trump remained steady
a Trendency Research feature
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After a four-point decline last month, Biden bounced back to an average allocated of 47 percent, while Trump’s average has held steady at 35 percent. As a reminder, Trendency Panelists do not choose one position over the other, but allocate their responses as overall choices given. Trendency’s Average Allocation is the average score in this case percentage vote among Trump, Biden, a third-party candidate, or not voting.
Trendency’s Higher Allocation measurement ignores voter intensity and captures more of a “horse-race” top-line look. Of Trendency’s panelists, 50 percent allocated more to Biden, while 37 percent allocated more to Trump, with 13 percent giving Biden-Trump equal allocation.
Voter Availability
Trendency has three categories of voter intensity:
Committed Voter Index
Available Voters
Unavailable Voters
Available Voters are voters that are either are leaning or open to voting for a candidate - effectively, the candidates’ ceiling.
The floor is a candidate’s Commitment Index: these are voters that are highly likely to turn out and vote for their candidate.
The Unavailable Vote is just the opposite. These are voters that will either not turnout or vote for one of your opponents (3rd party or the other major candidate).
Biden’s increase in our average is likely attributed to voters that shifted from available voters to committed. Biden’s Commitment Index jumped 10-points over the last month.
Trump also saw a small increase among his Committed Voter index, from 20 percent to 25 percent. However, Trump saw a sharp increase among the Unavailable Voter Index over the same period, reducing his ceiling and opportunity to make up much-needed ground.
Trendlines of Key Constituencies
We can also look at similar measurements among key constituencies and demographics. A cohort of interest that we’ve been following are older voters, age 65 and up, which have gone back and forth between Trump and Biden since March.
However, this should not be confused that seniors are somehow “undecided.” As we see in our Higher Allocation, only a small percentage (6 percent) is “torn” between Trump and Biden. So, what gives with the changes? We are seeing swings in voter intensity and enthusiasm.
And, of course, with the recent events and movements to address racial injustice and inequality, looking at both White and Black voters are responding is of particular interest. White voters, who favored Trump during the 2016 race, have been trending away from Trump during the last three months, but have not quite settled on Biden as their choice, yet. Black voters are a slightly different story as we see they had been trending fairly sharply away from Biden during the period March through May. However, Black voters changed course at the end of May to early June back to Biden.
The last group we want to highlight is the all-important voters that do not identify with either the Republican or Democratic parties. As we can see in the average allocation trendline, Independents have been going back and forth, but currently, they heavily favor Biden over Trump, opening the largest “lead” we’ve seen. However, we anticipate that we will continue to see this gap to close as we move into the fall.
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