IT APPEARS THAT THERE ARE SHY BIDEN VOTERS

Last week, Time magazine's Charlotte Alter -- presumably while reporting her story about the epidemic of conspiracy thinking in the heartland -- tweeted this:

Hello from the suburbs of Milwaukee, where I have met zero (0) people so far who are not voting the way they voted in 2016.

— Charlotte Alter (@CharlotteAlter) September 6, 2020

I was disheartened, because I've been imagining that there really are voters in GOP strongholds who aren't with the Trump program anymore, although they might not be acknowledging it publicly:

My hunch is that there are some shy Biden voters, most of whose husbands have huge Trump flags on the lawn.

— Steve M. (@nomoremister) September 6, 2020

According to Hanna Trudo of the Daily Beast, those shy Biden voters exist.

When Kristen talked over the phone Tuesday afternoon from a suburban Dallas neighborhood, she was in a different wing of her home than her spouse, with the door fastened shut.

“Right now, my husband is downstairs in the study and I’ve locked myself upstairs in my daughter’s bedroom in the opposite corner of the house,” said the mother of four, who was granted partial anonymity in order to speak freely.

Kristen’s caution may seem unorthodox. But to her it just made sense. She was, after all, about to detail her reasons for abandoning Donald Trump, the man she enthusiastically helped secure a landslide victory in Texas nearly four years ago.

There were many reasons why she wanted him out of office, but she didn’t want to start another fight with her husband over it....

In the post-Labor Day stretch before the general election, The Daily Beast conducted hours of conversations over two days with eight white suburban women in five consequential swing states—Texas, Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Minnesota—who expressed anti-Trump views on social media after years of remaining loyal to the GOP....

Most women who agreed to be interviewed did so by using only their first names. Several women expressed concerns about being potentially identified, which ranged from possible blowback by partners and other immediate family members to suspected targeting by neighbors, friends, or employers. One woman specifically coordinated a time to talk when her husband was not around.

We've already heard -- for instance, from the pollsters at USC Dornsife -- that rural women are defecting from Trump at a far greater rate than men, who don't seem to be defecting at all:

Among voters who live in rural areas — Trump’s stronghold — his vote among men has remained stable [since 2016] but has slipped by around 10 points among women.

So pollsters are finding signs of Trump abandonment, while a reporter finds Trump abandoners who won't talk about it publicly.

It will be fascinating if the polls are underestimating rather than overestimating Joe Biden's support.