Mentioned this the other day, but national and state polls disagree in a big way right now about the state of the 2020 race. National surveys put the contest around Biden +6 nationally, but state-level polls suggest he's up by 8 or so.

Yep, this is what the polls are suggesting https://twitter.com/richardmskinner/status/1259621618361434119?s=21 https://twitter.com/richardmskinner/status/1259621618361434119

There is an empirical answer to the question of which polls (state or national) we should put more weight on, but it’s complicated. Recall that national polls were closer to the result than state polls in 2016, but they were further away in 2012.

National pollsters are also often seen as of higher quality, with the big firms more often following correct methodological procedure (sampling and esp. weighting) than many small state-level firms ignore (eg 2016 and education weights).

On the other hand, inferences of state-level results drawn from national polls can be prone to error. Most people rely on uniform national swing, which gets you close but not the entire way to the 0 yard line. So you’d always prefer 10-20 good state-level polls to 10-20 nat ones.

So... what’s the right answer? Is Biden up 8-9 or 6-7? Closer to the former, but this is why we have election models and ours isn’t public yet and I can’t exactly spill the beans can I :)