again: i'm going to point to the low quality of the polling right now, more than anything else.

but, when polling white liberals in states like wisconsin around things like race riots, you have to understand a concept called a bradley effect. that is, most white liberals are not as honest as i am - white liberals tend to tell white lies when confronted with issues around race.

this is a well established phenomenon, and one that is still very real. i suspect it's happening right in front of you with the polling you're seeing, but you need an actual ballot before you can diagnose it; otherwise, it's just an educated guess to try to make sense of numbers that don't really add up. this is really an obvious classic bradley effect! it's just that you have to do the experiment to be sure.

the most recent measurable bradley effect we saw was in the 2019 canadian election, where last minute polling registered a "surge" for the ndp that was completely absent on the actual ground. this led to poor modelling predictions that should have really been caught by a savvy analyst.

if biden's numbers have improved upon the democratic party's numbers in the region since 2016, it's because he walked into this more appealing to white liberals than clinton was. and, if he wants to flip these states, he needs to do so by holding on to that white liberal support.

anything that has the potentiality to erode that support is going to hurt him in these states - and this has a tremendous potential to, even if respondents have been conditioned by the media to feel ashamed about it, and lie when asked about it.