Using Brandwatch Qriously, we surveyed 3,195 American adults in total. The above results come from the 2,013 respondents who say they are likely to vote or have already voted by mail in November’s election. (After weighting, this is 57.9% of the overall sample).

Joe Biden leads by six points, up by one on last week’s poll. Donald Trump’s support has remained the same at 41%. A further 9% of likely voters are still undecided on who they will vote for, down one point from last week. However, this week’s changes all sit well within the margin of error.

We want to be as transparent as possible with our polling data, so we’re taking the extra step of releasing it all with our bulletin. If you want to have a dig around or do your own analysis, you can find our tables and the raw data here. You can also find our methodology at the end of this bulletin.

We also surveyed people about the issues they felt were important. We supplied a list of options and asked respondents to pick up to three. Here’s how the issues stack up when the data is segmented by likely Trump voters and likely Biden voters (based on the answers respondents gave above).

The lack of common ground between the two groups is stark.

Even with Covid-19, which was in the top three most cited issues for both groups, the numbers vary massively. Over half of likely Biden voters chose this option, compared to just 27% of likely Trump voters. A contributing factor to this could be that 44% of potential Biden voters said their income had fallen due to the virus, compared to 33% of potential Trump voters.

Despite strong polarization around the issues, we found that the two camps have something in common. Both groups of likely voters think their own candidate is fairly moderate, while the opposing candidate is very radical.

The candidates’ ‘radicalism’ has been a big topic of discussion in recent weeks. For example, Trump has claimed Biden and the Democrats are aligned with the ‘radical left,’ which Biden has directly rebuked.

But what does this mean for the election?

As this FiveThirtyEight piece details, if the race tightens, the importance of having supporters enthusiastic to vote for you increases. Trump currently leads Biden on having supporters that are enthusiastic to vote for him, but faces a problem: Biden voters are enthusiastic to vote against Trump.

To counter this, Trump is attempting to portray Biden as being of the “radical left.” This has long been Trump’s campaign style going back to the Republican primary in 2015/16. Trump needs an opponent to paint as a villain. This strategy acts to mobilise his base and get them to the voting booths come election day.

That seems to be working for the 64% of likely Trump voters who now see Biden as very radical, but what about the other 36%?

With Biden being a 77-year-old, career politician – complete with specific voting records – the Trump campaign has a big challenge in painting him as a total ‘radical’.

On the other side, Biden will be looking at ways to get his supporters to the ballot box that go beyond dislike for Trump. As we noted above, likely Biden voters are more likely to have seen a fall in income due to Covid-19. Biden recently voiced his support for improving wages and benefits of essential workers – something that would sound attractive to people trying to make ends meet.

The politicization of college football

Covid-19 has forced us to completely rethink how to conduct sporting events safely, for both players and spectators. College football is no exception.

Using our Consumer Research platform, we found that Covid-19 contributed to a jump in online discussion around college football this August. Over 93k unique authors took to blogs, forums, and social media to talk about the coming games, compared to just 70k in the same month last year. 15% of August 2020 mentions around upcoming games mentioned the virus or pandemic.

As part of this week’s survey, we asked Americans about their views on college football – specifically on whether it should resume and in what way fans should be able to spectate.

No one option garnered overall support from our respondents. That said, the least opposed option is for games to resume with fans attending but socially distancing.

When we look at our likely voter groups again, the picture changes.

The majority of likely Biden voters are against college football resuming with socially-distanced fans, while a significant chunk of Trump supporters think the exact opposite. What’s going on?

Trump has focused far more attention on college football than Biden. Back in August he tweeted the words “Play College Football!” and then a few days later sent out a campaign email claiming the “radical left” were trying to cancel the fall season.

In comparison, Biden seems to be keeping his distance from the issue. While Trump has tweeted about football eight times since August, Biden’s account hasn’t mentioned it once (although empty stadiums are seen in a recently posted video).

Overall, Biden approached college football in tandem with other social gatherings with a campaign spokesperson saying, “If Trump had done his job, weddings, graduations, sports, and all manner of other events wouldn’t be impacted in the way they are now.”

With the fall season now underway, the issue isn’t settled. Different approaches are being tried in relation to fans in stadiums, while rules will likely change to reflect the evolving Covid-19 situation.

When it comes to who should make these decisions, we found people would be unlikely to look to politicians for guidance.

In general, Americans trust medical professionals, college and university leadership, and the players and coaches to make these difficult calls.

But there’s also, again, a clear party divide. 53% of likely Biden voters feel medical professionals should decide, versus 22% of likely Trump voters. For 36% of likely Trump voters, it’s players and coaches who should decide. Just 24% of likely Biden voters agree with them.

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Data and methodology

Detailed tables and raw data are published here. All data is released under the Open Data Commons Attribution License (ODC-By) v1.0

Brandwatch Qriously uses river sampling and delivers market research questions to respondents via ads on mobile device apps. The proportion of respondents recruited in a particular app is determined by the demographic of its users, which allows for the collection of representative samples. There are no incentives meaning participants are more likely to provide candid and accurate responses. Qriously has successfully predicted nine major elections. It offers an accurate, fast, and reliable way to conduct market research, even within hard-to-reach groups and countries.

About the poll: 3,195 adults aged 18+ nationwide were surveyed from 3 September – 7 September, 2020. The size of the subsample of likely voters was 2,013. Data was weighted to be nationally representative in terms of age, gender, education, race, geographical region (census division), and NCHS urban/rural community type, using data from the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey. The margin of error at the 95% confidence level, taking into account the effect of weighting, is +/- 2.3 percentage points for estimates from the full sample. For the subsample of likely voters it is +/- 2.8 percentage points. Sampling error can be larger for subsets of these samples. In addition to sampling error, all polls are subject to a range of other potential sources of error. When percentages do not sum to 100% this is due to the effect of rounding.