Real Clear Politics Changes The "Battlegrounds"

More than a week ago, I wondered why Real Clear Politics doesn't swap out at least a couple of the states in their list of "battleground" poll aggregates, when it seems like there's really not much of a battle taking place in several of those states:

I briefly thought of suggesting to RCP that, for instance, they revise the list of "battlegrounds" and take at minimum, say, North Carolina and Nevada off the list, since Trump is ahead by over 5 points in both, start running aggregates for Minnesota and Virginia, and place them on the "battleground" list instead. That would give a list that would show the real tipping-point states. Might not that provide more of a horse race?

The problem I saw, though, was that this would effectively put at least two more states in the solid-Trump column while acknowledging that two solid-Biden states are now in play, which changes the whole "close race" paradigm RCP and all the right people have been pushing since 2020.

As of Monday, in a bit of a surprise, RCP did in fact expand its list of "battlegrounds", which it designates with that precise word. Interestingly, though, while it added both Minnesota and Virginia to the list, it removed neither North Carolina nor Nevada, and it went on to add Ohio, New Hampshire, Florida, Texas, and Colorado as well. As of now, Ohio, Florida, and Texas are hardly tossups, they're for Trump, and it's completely uncontroversisal to say that Ohio and Florida haven't been swing states since 2000. The only potential new battleground they've added besides Minnesota and Virginia is New Hampshire.

Beyond that, even the Biden campaign has conceded Florida to Trump. As of yesterday,

Joe Biden’s campaign chairwoman, Jen O’Malley Dillon, has already conceded Florida’s 30 electoral votes to former President Donald Trump.

During a podcast interview with the far-left Puck, O’Malley Dillon was asked if the campaign considered Florida a legitimate battleground state . . . . Her answer was a flat, “No.”

So why is RCP xontinuing the charade when even Biden's campaign doesn't intend to contest Florida? All I can think is adding Minnesota and Virginia to the "battleground" list must have been quite a struggle behind the scenes, and adding the others looks like it must have been some sort of compromise. And even acknowledging the wider list of "battlegrounds", they've made no change to their Electoral College prediction, which is still Trump 219 and Biden 202, with 117 tossups.

But let's look at the mindset of Tom Bevan, RCP's co-founder and president, in an interview with Fox 11 Los Angeles published just this morning:

ELEX MICHAELSON, FOX 11: What is the state of the race right now? Is Donald Trump ahead?

TOM BEVAN, REALCLEARPOLITICS: He is, and you know what? Actually, his lead has been remarkably stable. . . . We take an average of those big seven battleground states and look at that over time, and Trump's lead has been around three points -- it's at 3.2 right now -- for the last eight months. It really hasn't changed that much.

I don't undesatand. If the race is "remarkably stable", how can RCP keep estimating there are 117 Electoral College tossups? But he goes on,

As you mentioned, at the national level, he's up one point. That is a close race. But just to put that in perspective, on this day four years ago, during the 2020 election, Joe Biden was up ten points in that race. So Trump is in a much stronger position this time around than he was four years ago. But again, in this race, there's a lot that can happen between now and Election Day.

Except that the national poll is meaningless, the popular vote doesn't elect the president, the Electoral College does. And if the race is "remarkably stable", isn't there less likelihood that anything will change between now and Election Day? And then we have that question of the disparity between the 2020 polls and the polls now, something like thirteen points when Trump was down 10 then and is up 3 now.

I'm not sure how Bevan makes his money, but it must have something to do with readers going to his poll aggregates to get some sort of insight into what's going on -- except that. with the auguries in just those polls showing Minnesota and Virginia in play, Trump behind by only single digits in New Jersey and New York, and Trump 13 points ahead of his close-race performance in 2020, this is looking less and less like a close race.

So I'm still left with the question of how Bevan makes his money. It really sounds like his customers don't want to hear Trump is winning, and potentially starting to win by a lot. Bevan, co-founder and president of RCP, is staying with the line that it's gonna be a close race, and apparently there are people willing to keep paying for what he's putting out.

Even when he's more or less forced to change his list of "battlegrounds", he does it in the most minimal possible way, adding safe Republican states to the list just to muddy up the pcture. And somebody's happy enough with this to keep buying whatever it is he's selling.

I'm back to Rush Limbaugh's insight that the polls aren't meant to report the news, they're meant to shape it. Real Clear Politics indeed.