1. If you missed my convo w @smerconish on @CNN it was w @RichardThau who runs a large, ongoing focus group project known as The Swing Voter Project that is targeted at counties w disproportionately high numbers of Romney to Clinton, Obama to Trump voters, IE "swing voters.

2. I didn't know about TSVP or Thau before the int but I have checked it out since & learned a lot during the int itself. He's been doing these focus groups for months, most important thing is (as he points out) his qualitative data has largely confirmed by argument about the 2/3

3. 1/3 split among the Obama to Trump voters, which BTW, I formed off theory & some @MorningConsult data in the Midwest I was privy to. However, he does say that out of the 17 he's done, the one he did in June, the participants behaved differently- many more moved to Biden. BUT

4. he went onto to say that in the next focus group, behavior had reverted to the mean. That is to say, within the Trump to Obama voters, the Trump/Biden split had returned to its prior normal split, which advantages Trump. As I say in the int, I am hoping to reach out to Mr.

5. Thau to see if he will keep me apprised of the next few focus groups. If the pandemic was an event that happened and then the world moved on- my expectation would def be a continued Trump adv- return to the norm. But, the pandemic is an ongoing crisis that, without a shutdown

6. could actually get worse. And if the Cares 4 package is not BIG and passed soon, the economic woes are also likely to affect things. So, def potential for continued support for Biden among these voters, who I expect lean right even though they might not admit it. Now, back to

7. main question that @smerconish asks for the segment which is how can this focus group data be correct if Biden is leading among Indies in the quantitative data in the polls. Unfortunately, these shows are not @ElectionWsphr so its hard to get into the weeds on Qs like this so

8. wanted to be sure to actually answer this- which we did not do. Biden has a large lead among Indies now- it is an even bigger lead than the steady advantage he's had in most polling the entire cycle. The % of right-leaning Indies in a poll affects the Dems/Bidens support among

9. BC remember- right leaners are closet Rs, left-leaners are closet Ds and due to the, shall we say, issues the GOP is going through these days, there has been a decline in the % of Rep identifiers in the electorate w a corresponding INCREASE in the % of Indies- bc that's where

10. these former Rs are going- they are now calling themselves Indies. Some are indeed going the full monty, like my lovely @ProjectLincoln friends and my awesome boss @jerry_jtaylor but most are still really conservative and Republicany- they're just embarrassed to admit it.

11. So they say, Indie and go into that pot, but they are voting for Rs and honestly, most of them are and have been still saying they approve of the job Trump is doing (bc they realize that the data matters) & most of them intend to vote R straight tickets bc of R policies &

12. and judges and guns, and abortion. And so they are saying Indie, they don't really like Trump but they sure as hell won't say that in the poll and they still are voting for him and all other Rs bc "the Dems want to do socialism." What this means is, right now, our pool of Is

13. is a bit more lopsided in terms of its leaners than it is normally, although nationally (it varies by state, think Vt!) nationally, there is normally a "lean right" bias to the Indie pool. That lean right bias has grown more pronounced over the past decade and even more so

14 since Trump entered stage left. So when you look at "swing voters" you really need to siphon out the leaners and find those pure Indies otherwise, what you are capturing, largely, is partisanship. Probably realigners. Romney to Clinton: college educated whites realigning to

15. Ds. Obama to Trump: non-college educated whites realigning to the GOP. The 1/3 2/3 divide among the Obama to Trump voters: pure Indies versus leaners. Here's the segment! https://www.cnn.com/videos/tv/2020/08/01/swing-voter-focus-groups-reveal-preference-for-trump.cnn