Joe Biden leads Donald Trump in Pennsylvania and Florida, according to new Times/Siena polls taken after the first debate.
Biden leads in Pennsylvania, 49 to 42 percent among likely voters. He leads in Florida, 47 to

A lot for Democrats to like in the early voting data over the last few days, as they are now running ahead of where they stood at a similar point of the general election--thanks to a stronger Black turnout

The Black share of in-person early voters was basically identical to the general election over the first few days of voting, but that began to diverge late last week--and even more so over the weekend, which is typically a strong period for Black turnout in Georgia

As most of you know, the Black turnout in Georgia (and nationwide) was relatively weak v. other groups in the general election. That's been a matter of some consternation for progressives who wish it weren't so, but it's also the big source of upside for Democrats in this runoff

At the moment, the higher Black share of in person early voting is enough to cancel out the smaller share of mail-in absentee voters, who were overwhelmingly Democratic in the general--giving Democrats, in my view, a slightly more favorable electorate at this stage of voting

Looking ahead, we're about to lose a certain amount of clarity in our day-by-day comparison, since the holidays will dampen (and outright eliminate) turnout on GOP-friendly days. We'll probably watch the Dems expand their lead v. the general, and then the GOP try and claw it back

Some early theories on went went wrong with the pre-election polling this

Before we go into what went wrong, let's just call a spade a spade here: this was a bad polling error. It's comparable to 2016 in size, but pollsters don't have the excuses they did last time.
This year's polls would have been *way* worse than 2016 with a 2016 methodology

There are really two halves of polling: the quality of the sample you get, and the adjustments you take to improve the representativeness of your sample.
Since 2016, pollsters got better at the adjustments, but the underlying sample got worse

To my mind, the easiest way to see it: the crosstabs on white voters nationwide, particularly whites without a degree
In 2016, the polls *did* show Trump doing way better among those voters.
In 2020, they did not. And they were dead wrong.
Same story with seniors.

So what happened? How did the samples get that much worse over the last four years, especially among white voters without a degree and seniors?
At this stage, it's really just speculation. We'll know more later--it's too early for an autopsy.
But here's some early speculation

Georgia early voting took a few days off over the holidays, like most everything else, but it was back near general election levels on Monday

As we've expected from the start, this creates a challenge for comparing where we stand now v. the general election.
Day 11-13 were fairly good days for the GOP in Oct.; they run farther behind without those days, but we have no reason to think that's for a meaningful reason

I'll offer two ways of trying to account for this. It's not perfect, but there are many circumstances in which it still permits useful analysis. 1) Remove those same days of in-person voting (not mail) from the advanced vote in October; 2) A direct day-to-day comparison

That first comparison--removing ipev from GE holiday-equiv. --will be represented with a dotted line, shown here.
This isn't perfect: one could imagine, for ex., that someone who would have voted on day 12 will now vote on day 18, boosting later tallies. But still useful context

With that in mind, it still seems Democrats continue to show a lot of strength. Yesterday, they continued to run well ahead of the general election, including excluding holiday equiv. days

Another day of strong early voting in Georgia, with another 154k voters turning out in person yesterday. That's similar to but slightly behind the fourth day of early voting in the general, which was at 164k

Cumulatively, we're still running ahead of the general election on in-person early voting, but I don't think anyone expects that to last--and there's a very long time left for that flip to happen

As I've said, the big takeaway is that the turnout looks like it will be healthy and high, and it's not obvious who it will help v. the general. As I've mentioned, there are crosscutting patterns at play that make it difficult to sort out where we'll end up. Let's look at a few

One is that there are fewer absentee votes--and those are heavily Democratic.
This is expected: far fewer realistic opportunities for voters to request a ballot for this special than the general. And some counties may be behind

Now, of course, if in-person and election day voting drop just as much (or more), then this isn't actually an issue for Democrats at all. That would have been a very reasonable assumption before early voting. Now I'm not totally sure! We'll have to wait and see

1) Looks like Trump KNEW what the coup plotters were plotting on the 6th, so he arrived an hour late to the stage, and talked longer than he intended, before he asked MAGA to walk peacefully down Pennsylvania Avenue to the Capitol.

He also didn't walk WITH them as he promised.

THREAD: CCP vs US Military, on home soil.

1. I watched the Executive Orders and I watched the media panic. I watched the MSM lies and I watched the treason. I watched the fake Russia narrative. I watched the calls for impeachment. I watched a stolen election, in full view.

IMP 🚨 INVESTIGATION

India's lockdown was called world's largest, strictest etc. @ BBC, we wanted to know how the govt planned it.

So, what're we looking at?

Govt docs that reveal every department/agency who was consulted by PM Modi before imposing #lockdown.

#Thread

How did we access the docs? Well, for months my colleague Arjun Parmar and I filed RTI applications with the relevant govt depts - State & Centre. Hundreds in fact. We then filed appeals, then filed second appeals..phew!

Background - this day last year, India had less than 600 cases and nine deaths. Some European & Latin American nations (with way higher numbers) had imposed lockdowns.

China, with thousands of deaths and cases by March 2020, never imposed a national lockdown.

One more thing - India started monitoring and preparing it's response to coronavirus from January 8, 2020. It was repeatedly mentioned that none other than PM was personally leading the effort.

Let's start with what we've got now.

India's lockdown was imposed by an @ndmaindia order. Who heads NDMA? Prime Minister.

So we asked NDMA - who all were consulted before lockdown? Also, how many NDMA meetings did the PM attend? Their response.

NIL to both. Yes, NIL.

Thread on elections:

1) Only CPIM can compete with BJP in hypocrisy and shamelessness. I mean they are calling the opposition coalition (Muslim League + Congress) communal in Kerala, equating Muslim League with RSS and subtly consolidating Hindus using Islamophobic

2) campaigns while in West Bengal they're themselves in alliance with Congress and a Muslim party ISF, founded by an Islamic cleric. In West Bengal they are appealing on the lines of social justice, Dalit emancipation and Muslim empowerment.

3) Their candidates in Bengal, most of whom would distance themselves from anybody visibly Muslim and would leave no chance to demonize them, are now flaunting pictures with Muslim men and women covered in skullcaps and Hijab. In Kerala, they once disowned their own party leader

4) because he performed Umrah. Meanwhile, their PR agency called NewsClick is publishing pieces suggesting how TMC's violence helped BJP make inroads in Bengal while ignoring that it was CPIM's vote that shifted to BJP and hence it should be them who should be called out for not

5) being able to keep their votes intact. I am not in support of Mamata in Bengal or Congress in Kerala. I only hope and wish ISF, IUML, SDPI, AIMIM, AIUDF, Welfare Party and other Muslim outfits win as many seats as there are! #ApniQayadat

End.