⁍ Some Republicans, including in President Donald Trump’s own circle, claim that the polls are oversampling Democrats and undersampling Republicans.

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⁍ An in-depth look at the current high-quality national telephone polls reveals it’s quite unlikely the polls are inaccurate because of an undersampling of Republicans.

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⁍ Biden is leading not because the polls are undersampling Republicans, but because he simply has more support than Trump does nationally.

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– The first national polls for the 2020 election are out, and they show a familiar face in the lead: Joe Biden. The former VP has a 7-point lead over President Trump in a Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll, and a Washington Post/ABC News poll has him up by 10 points. The reason for Biden’s edge is simple, writes Chris Cillizza at the Washington Post: “He simply has more support than Trump does nationally.” In Cillizza’s view, the polls have the same partisan makeup as in the 2016 election—Democrats make up six points more than Republicans, while Republicans make up the same six points more than Democrats. Biden’s advantage has expanded over the last few months because he’s doing better among each group, including Democrats, Republicans, and independents. “This statistic isn’t a current attitude but rather a measurable fact,” Cillizza writes. “It’s not that the percentage they’re making up in the polls is significantly different. … Put another way, the poll that does weight for partisanship in a proper way was one of Trump’s worst polls this summer.”