ClaimsNate Silver

“The two new primary polls out this afternoon don't show any negative fallout for Biden in the D primary from the Ukraine story.”

Nate Silver, writing on X 30 September 2019 Post by @NateSilver538 on X, 2019-09-30 (X)

Factual AI timelines and forecasting Political

Two new Democratic primary polls released on 2019-09-30 show no negative fallout for Biden from the Ukraine story, and the HarrisX poll has him gaining a couple of points.

Unresolvable The public record could not settle it.

Factual: Statements about the present or the past, checked against the record: did they hold up?

What would count as true or false

True: two national Democratic primary polls released on 30 September 2019 (one of them HarrisX) both show Biden's support stable or higher compared with each pollster's previous poll, and HarrisX shows him up about 2 points (1 to 3 counts). Mostly true: both polls show no decline, but the HarrisX gain is slightly different from 'a couple of points' (for example 1 or 4 points). Mixed: one poll shows no fallout and the other shows Biden declining. Mostly false: both polls show small declines, or the HarrisX poll shows no gain while the other poll is flat. False: both polls show clear declines for Biden, or no such polls were released that day.

Set before the research began.

Evidence (6)

  1. E1 Ukraine whistleblower coverage hasn't impacted Biden favorability: poll The Hill · 30 September 2019

    “The former vice president maintains the lead in the Morning Consult Democratic primary poll at 32 percent support, which is unchanged from the previous week.”

  2. E2 Ukraine whistleblower coverage hasn't impacted Biden favorability: poll The Hill · 30 September 2019

    “When narrowed to voters in early primary states, Biden dropped 3 percentage points from last week to 31 percent.”

  3. E3 Joe Biden slips in polls amid Ukraine attacks from President Trump YouGov · 3 October 2019

    “He is no longer in first place when Democratic primary voters name their first choice.”

  4. E4 HPU Poll: Among Democratic Candidates, Biden, Sanders and Warren Have Most Primary Election Support | High Point University High Point University · 30 September 2019

    “Biden also has support of 31% of these same Democrats if they were voting in the Democratic presidential primary right now.”

  5. E5 Monmouth Poll: Biden v. Warren Vie for Shot at Unshaken Trump InsiderNJ · 2 October 2019

    “Monmouth’s August poll, which showed a three-way race at the top among Warren (20%), Biden (19%), and Sanders (20%), was considered an outlier at the time it was released.”

  6. E6 Tag Archives: Ukraine controversy Ellis Insight · 25 October 2019

    “HarrisX (Oct. 21-22; 440 US registered Democratic voters) finds the Biden lead reaching 27-19-14 percent over Warren and Sanders.”

Reasoning

E1 shows that Biden was unchanged at 32 percent in the national Morning Consult primary poll released on 30 September 2019. That supports the "no fallout" claim for one of the two polls, though E2 notes a 3-point drop among early-state voters. None of the evidence covers a HarrisX poll released that day, so the second poll and the claimed gain of a couple of points cannot be checked. E4 is a different poll and gives no earlier figure to compare against, and E3 and E6 are dated after the claim was made.

Cite this claim

Nate Silver, “Two new Democratic primary polls released on 2019-09-30 show no negative fallout for Biden from the Ukraine story, and the HarrisX poll has him gaining a couple of points.” (said 30 September 2019). Verdict: unresolvable. Reliability API, claim c_fe8f8593b490, method 0.1.0+28da144b, dataset release v1.1.2. https://epistacklabs.com/claims/c_fe8f8593b490

This claim is in dataset release v1.1.2, with the same verdict.

Reply to this claim

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More factual claims by Nate Silver

  1. Resolved true Factual 8 September 2023
    “It’s not hard, for instance, to find polls from this point in 2015 showing Hillary Clinton with double-digit leads over Trump.”

    Polls from around September 2015 can be found showing Hillary Clinton with double-digit leads over Donald Trump.

  2. Mostly true Factual 21 May 2022
    “There was never any spike in Biden's approval rating.”

    Joe Biden's approval rating never had a spike.

  3. Resolved true Factual 9 June 2021
    “This is the pollster that had shown a big bounce for Garcia before, so either that previous poll was an outlier or her momentum has been usurped by Wiley.”

    A pollster that earlier showed a big bounce for Garcia has now shown a result implying either that the earlier poll was an outlier or that Wiley has taken over her momentum.

  4. Mixed Factual November 2016
    “Instead, there was a modest polling error, well in line with historical polling errors, but even a modest error was enough to provide for plenty of paths to victory for Trump.”

    The 2016 polling error was modest and in line with historical polling errors, yet large enough to give Trump many paths to victory.

  5. Mostly true Factual November 2016
    “The single most important reason that our model gave Trump a better chance than others is because of our assumption that polling errors are correlated.”

    The main reason FiveThirtyEight's 2016 model gave Trump a better chance than other models was its assumption that polling errors are correlated.

All of them

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