I'm not going to argue with your personal opinions. To see if the public as a whole agrees, we use things like polls.

And obviously polls can be wrong. But the extent to which the polls were wrong in 2016 is greatly exaggerated. The national polls had it almost exactly, off only by one percent. The polls were dead on in Texas, and Virginia, Trump's support was overrated in Georgia, in Colorado, in New Mexico, and Nevada. The only states where there was a significant error underrating Trump were in the rust belt.

If voters were truly afraid to show their support for Trump, you'd expect that fear to be felt across the nation. But that didn't happen. It was only in a small area. If anything, you'd expect Trump to be underrated most in states with a strong democratic majority. But, Trump was actually overestimated by about 5% in California and NY, and by 4% in New Jersey. Weird that in some of the most Democratic states Trump supporters were the least afraid of speaking their mind. Kind of makes it seem like the silent majority theory is wrong.

Which of course it is. Because, in 2016 there was no silent majority. As a matter of fact, there was no majority at all, but there was a vocal plurality for Hillary Clinton, which the polls showed quite accurately. Nationally, the polls were about as accurate as you could hope for. At a state level, the results were not consistently off in one direction. They were generally accurate, with some states overrating one candidate, and some overrating the other. It just so happens the states where Trump was overrated happened to be states where it was close enough to matter.

Also, Trump does not do any better in internet polls than phone polls. If people were Truly just embarrassed about voting for Trump, you'd expect Trump to do better when there is no live person on the other line. We know that people are far less inhibited on the internet. Yet, we don't see anything like that. https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/trump-supporters-arent-shy-but-polls-could-still-be-missing-some-of-them/

Meanwhile, polls show that far more voters are decided compared to this point last year. For instance in Fox's most recent poll in Pennsylvania, 97% of those polled already decided on a candidate. In most of the polls taken at this time last year, only about 91% or so of people had picked a candidate. So, it is possible that the polls were actually perfectly accurate, and voters who were genuinely undecided went largely towards Trump.

Even if the all 3% of people who didn't answer in Fox's poll (other polls have similar amounts of undecided voters) because they were afraid of what the poll taker would think of them (which would be really weird but w/e), then Trump still loses. Trump supporters would not only have to be not owning up to supporting Trump, but they'd have to be going a step further and claiming to support Biden. Silent majority isn't enough, you'd need a lying majority. 

And then there's the fact that Trump doing worse in the polls than he was in 2016. So, not only would Trump supporters need to be ashamed, but they'd have to be more ashamed than they were in 2016. The polls would have to have gotten worse. 

The polls simply don't support your hypothesis either in 2016 or 2020. And while polls are certainly not perfect, they've proven themselves far more reliable than guy on the internet, so I'm going to take them more seriously.

I disagree with your assessment that 2016 national polls reflected the final outcome.

I agree that if there was fear of embarrasment, it would show stronger in phone polling than online polling. And I think it does, it's just that your link doesn't happen to prove it (although even your link shows a 2% discrepancy in favor of the shy theory). I think those numbers are muddled because there's surely plenty of other factors that affect phone versus online data, factors that will influence the split between Biden versus Trump. Such as level of education among phone pollers versus online pollers. For example, what if people polled by phone have lower education than people polled online, which will skew the phone numbers in favor of Trump? And thereby hide the "shy effect". Do you know if the study you linked to has corrected for these factors?

In the study you linked to, if you follow the link and study it further you clearly see a "shy" effect in similar topics though:

"The study also examined whether social desirability bias is at play on a range of sensitive topics that have been particularly prevalent this year. 

Morning Consult asked respondents whether they believed there was discrimination in the U.S. today against a range of races, religions and sexual orientations. There was a social desirability bias present in these questions, with voters much more likely to say there is discrimination against these groups when they answer on the phone than when they answer online.

Phone respondents were more likely to say there is more discrimination against Black Americans, gays and lesbians, Hispanics, Muslims and Jewish people."

https://morningconsult.com/form/shy-trump-2020/

In short: roughly 10% of people polled by phone felt pressure to admit there is discrimination against minorities. This proves that shy effects exist.

If nearly 10% of respondents in a political poll feel pressured to lie in favor of progressive policies, because they're asked by phone instead of online, I think there's a big potential for at least a small shy effect when it comes to voting Trump as well.

I'm not sure how you could possibly disagree with an assessment that I never made. 

I didn't say the 2016 national polls reflected the final outcome. Because obviously the final outcome was different. What I said was that the polling average was only off by 1%. 

The polling average predicted that Hillary Clinton would win 48.5% of the vote and Trump would win 44.9.

In actuality, Donald Trump received 45.9% of the vote, and Hillary received 48% of the vote. The net difference between the polling average and the actual result was 1.5%. This is within the margin of error, and is not statistically significant. 

Trump supporters were underestimated by 1%, which is again not statistically significant. Unless you expect polls to be 100% perfect, which you should not if you understand statistics, then we can say that these results are accurate. You can disagree with it if you want, but then you're disagreeing with reality.

And since polls only underestimated Trump by 1% on a national level, then at most you can say that 1% of the voting population were hidden Trump supporters that the polls did not capture. They caught pretty much all of them. And I can not fathom why if this was the case on a national scale there would have been a significant shy Trump contingency only in Ohio, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Minnesota. The commonly agreed on explanation, that whites without college degree voted at higher than expected rates, seems like a much better explanation. 

As for whether the studies corrected for the difference between phone voters and internet voters, yes they did. The Pew study is linked in the article, so go read it if you're interested, their methodology is very detailed. 

You've ignored the other reasons why there is no hidden Trump vote, which tbh makes me not want to continue, because why waste my time? As for the racial questions, yes, that showed an effect. And yes, people may be shy about expressing certain views. However, the data does not show that support voting for Trump is one of those and that the effect is so pronounced that it will negate Biden's much larger lead. If that's your opinion you have to do better than "well I think". You could start by explaining how the 2016 polls show evidence of hidden Trump support. 

In a minor polling update, Biden is now favored to win Ohio according to fivethirtyeight.com. This is largely due to a new poll by Fox News showing Biden up by 5 while Quinnipac shows him up by one.

The way fivethirtyeight works is that older polls are factored in less over time (as opposed to RealClearPolitics which just drops old polls out after a certain date and averages them all equally, which is why they have Biden up by 3.5ish). So, since these are really the only high rated polls over the last month or so, they're going to have a big impact on the average. And therefore, you should wait for other polls confirming that before getting too excited or disappointed depending on your tastes.

Ohio is noteworthy because it gives a sense of how the region will go in general. Of the states in the area, Iowa is consistently the most conservative, followed by Ohio. Since 1992 (as far back as I checked) Ohio has been about 5 points to the right of Pennsylvania consistently in every election.

There haven't been major demographic shifts in Ohio, so there's little reason to expect that it won't be more republican leaning than Pennsylvania and the other states in the area. So, if Ohio actually does vote for Biden (which I'm skeptical of), then Biden almost certainly wins Michigan, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Considering how thin the margins were in those states, then realistically, Trump needs a 7 point victory or so in Ohio.

If Trump loses those 4 states, or even 3 without Ohio, it's not clear where he could make up the electoral votes. The only other states Biden has a lead in that are remotely in play are New Hampshire and Nevada, and those would only help if he keeps Ohio and wins every other swing state. If he loses Ohio too, then he'd need like... Virginia and Colorado where Hillary won by more than 5% and Biden is currently leading by about 10. At that point we may as well be talking about flipping California.

But of course, it's just a couple of polls. Still, the race doesn't seem to be narrowing.

Also of note in the Fox News poll is that of respondents that they trusted Biden more in filling RBG's seat. It's a small difference, 49 to 46, but it gives a slight indication as to how impactful the vacancy will be. Some expected it would galvanize Republican voters, but maybe that won't be the case.

In an interesting evolving story, Bloomberg and other donors are paying felon's fines.

Florida voters voted on an initiative that would allow felons to have their voting rights restored after serving their sentence. However, the legislature later passed a law that they could not vote if they had outstanding court fees or fines.

So, a group headed by Bloomberg's companies is paying off those fines.

Lets not bullshit here. Bloomberg at least is paying these fines because he believes the felons, predominately minorities, will vote democrats. Any potential altruism is a distant second. But in keeping with the theme of not bullshitting, the legislature clearly passed the law because they thought felons would vote Democrat.

There is a question of legality, as paying someone to vote for a candidate is a crime. But, I can't see how this would violate that. Unless part of the process asks for information about party registration, or somehow screens people for their preference. The fund is limited to those who registered to vote prior to the new legislation and owe less than 1,500. As long as someone who fits that category is not pressured into a particular decision, I can't see how this would be a problem, despite its clear political motivation.

Will this have an effect? Well, the program is aiming to aid 31,000 felons. Trump won by 113k or in 2016. If we generously assume that all of the felons will vote and that they will vote for Democrats at a 70% rate (which seems a bit conservative), that's a 21,000 swing for Biden. Not enough to swing the results, but a notable chunk. Compared to spending on ads, this is probably a pretty good way to secure votes.

Have you read any news lately?  The economy is sputtering because the stimulus and extra unemployment benefits have pretty much ran out.  August retail numbers are down and I bet you September will be worse.

Also what is known about Trump is not trust or safe.  How can one trust Trump except that he lies when he opens his mouth.

Nothing much going on in the polls, but in terms of fundraising, it doesn't look good for Trump.

Trump has withdrawn TV ads in all but three states, Georgia, Florida, and Arizona.

The thing about this is that, these states don't win for Trump. Even if Trump wins in these three, he still needs North Carolina, Ohio, and then either Pennsylvania or Wisconsin. He's down in the last two by a significant margin, and the other two are tossups with a slight Biden advantage. One of the proposed reason for Hillary's loss in 2016 is that she took the rust belt for granted and didn't spend much money there. Now we see the opposite, at least in terms of ads. And, perhaps the Trump campaign is overconfident in states like Texas and Ohio which seem safe.

Of course, neither TV ads nor fundraising are the be all end all, which we found out in 2016. But, Trump is also decreasing internet spending. He could be banking on his supporters doing the work for him (and maybe some foreign bots will help) by posting memes, fake news, and maybe some real news on Facebook. Has the public gotten more savvy since then? Have social media companies gotten better at filtering out disinformation? We'll see.

More of an issue though is just how badly Trump is getting outfundraised. Biden raised 250 million dollars or so in the past week. This is compared to Biden raising about 330 million in August, which blew Trump out of the water. This may be an indication that Biden supporters may be more enthusiastic. And you can say that voters aren't actually enthusiastic for Biden, but are enthusiastically anti-Trump, but that doesn't really matter when the ballots are counted.

Traditionally, this is the point where things are tightening up. Will that happen this time? Trump is such a polarizing candidate, and this election has dominated the news in a way that's unusual even for presidential candidates. At this point, it's hard to imagine that voters don't have enough information about the candidates to decide.

Edit:

Actually, some new poll results coming out. 

One to make note of is the Tralfalgar group, which got a bit of a reputation in 2016, for correctly calling Michigan and Pennsylvania. for Trump. Confirmation bias led people to believe they had some superior methodology, although this kind of ignored the fact that they were for the most part less accurate than the average pollster.

Tralfalgar uses an odd methodology whereby they ask who a person thinks their neighbor will vote for. The theory is that people did not want to admit that they would vote for Trump, but their impression of their neighbors would show their true beliefs.

There's nothing wrong with innovation, but the methodology didn't really work. Overall, it just shifted things in favor of Trump in mostly every state. While they were praised largely for correctly predicting Pennsylvania for instance, they were off by about 7 points in Nevada. While they correctly called Florida for Trump, they overestimated him by about 3.5 points. In absolute terms, the polls that had Hillary up by one were closer to the actual results. 

I wish I had more of their results to compare, but mostly this seems to be a case of a broken clock being right twice a day. In any election both candidates are going to be off by 3-4 points in at least a few states, so if you consistently overrate one candidate, then you'll be right. When the hits happen in the states that matter, and the misses are in states that don't, then confirmation bias kicks in.

So, back to 2020, let's see what Trafalgar group has.

In Pennsylvania, they have Biden up by 2. Assuming they are off by the same margin they were in 2016 then that would translate to about a 3.5 point Biden lead, which would be about consistent with what we see nationally. In Michigan, they have Trump up by a point. In 2016 they were close but off by 1.7%. So, if we assume the same degree of error, then Biden wins. In Georgia, they have Trump by 2. They were pretty close in 2016, off by .5. So, according to that, Trump would still win but by a smaller margin. In Florida, they have Trump by 3. In 2016, they were off by 3, which would make it a tossup. 


So, what does all this mean? Probably that I'm losing it and need to lay off. One pollster probably isn't that significant. But for those who feel that this pollster was some kind of guru and found the secret of uncovering Trump supporters, then the results might be interesting. They do show Trump doing better relatively than most pollsters this time around, but at the same time they show Biden being in a much better position than Hillary. If you adjust for their margin of error in 2016 you'd have narrow Biden victories in Pennsylvania and Florida. 

In other polls, another poll shows Biden is up by a small amount in Maine-2. The pollster is unrated by fivethirtyeight, but again this is a 1 electoral vote district (which nevertheless may be crucial) so we take what we get.

Suffolk University, an A rated pollster, has Biden up by 6 in Minnesota. At this point Minnesota does not seem to be a tossup in any real sense. As mentioned Trafalgar has Biden up by 2 in Pennsylvania. While this is a small lead, that's a republican leaning pollster, so that's actually decent news for Biden. Trump really needs Pennsylvania. Speaking of which Hart Research associates released a flurry of polls with very good results for Biden showing ten point leads in Arizona, Pennsylvania, and a six point lead in Florida. That being said, they're only an above average pollster and have a democratic lean of about 1.3 points historically. Still, when you take this in combination with republican leaning polls like the one mentioned above, we see that both are shifting in the same direction. Even if polls have not been corrected since 2016 and are still overestimating the democrats even a 1% shift in Pennsylvania ends things. 

Again, I am really anxious about the elections which has resulted in kind of obsessive poll watching, so I'll be updating regularly. I definitely have a pro-Biden bias, but I think I'm fairly decent at analyzing the data objectively, so maybe you'll find it interesting. 

When is the 1st Presidential Debate supposed to be?

If anything I stated below is incorrect, feel free to correct:

Assuming Trump is able to win the first 5 states while hanging on to the ones he has now, that would bring his electoral count to 259, while Biden's would be at 249 if he hung on to all the other states he leads in, not counting Pennsylvania or Wisconsin.

And even if it gets to that scenario, Trump would need to focus all his efforts on Pennsylvania to secure that state's 20 votes, bringing his total to 279 and winning reelection. If he were to get Wisconsin, and Biden gets Pennsylvania, then we'd have an unprecedented 269-269 tie. If that were to happen, then the tiebreaker would be decided by the House of Representatives, the majority of which is currently Democrat. Which would all but guarantee Biden winning the tiebreaker and the presidency. All the while, the Vice Presidency would be decided by the Senate, which is mostly Republican at the moment. If it were to stay that way, then Pence would likely remain VP, leading to a verrrrrry weird term of Biden-Pence.

And even if it gets to that scenario, Trump would need to focus all his efforts on Pennsylvania to secure that state's 20 votes, bringing his total to 279 and winning reelection. If he were to get Wisconsin, and Biden gets Pennsylvania, then we'd have an unprecedented 269-269 tie. If that were to happen, then the tiebreaker would be decided by the House of Representatives, the majority of which is currently Democrat. Which would all but guarantee Biden winning the tiebreaker and the presidency. All the while, the Vice Presidency would be decided by the Senate, which is mostly Republican at the moment. If it were to stay that way, then Pence would likely remain VP, leading to a verrrrrry weird term of Biden-Pence.

This is the only part you are incorrect about, weirdly enough states actually decide, so the representatives from each states decide who their states 1 vote goes to, so in this process Wyoming and California are equal. The current house is 26 republican, 22 Democrat, and 2 Tied (Michigan and Pennyslavnia) if I'm not mistaken, meaning trump would win.

(Sorry about not using the quote, I actually don't know how to quote specific sections)