It just seems strange because I don’t think that many people are on the fence. Perhaps I’m crazy, but I feel most people know exactly who they’re voting for already. Makes me wonder how valid this cross-section was that was used as the sample set. If it accurately represents the US, including undecided voters, then… 😮
I listen to those news things that interview people on the street and I’m amazed at how many are uninformed and can go either way.
There’s a Trump undercount in polling: Trump voters don’t trust “MSM” and therefore don’t answer calls from pollsters, or are embarrassed to admit they will vote for him.
Same goes for asking random people on the street.
Pollsters are compensating for that undercount of unlikely voters. 2016 they were low, 2020 still low but pretty close. They will have scaled it up to be more accurate this go around.
Except there’s a few snags there. In between the 2020 election and now, there was an insurrection, Roe v. Wade was overturned, Trump was convicted of crimes and indicted for many more. These are things that a statistical process can’t really account for when putting weight on how likely a respondant is to actually vote.
Trump lost in 2020. Do all of these events incentivize more people will turn out for him this time than in the last election? Or will less people turn out for him?
Every time something unprecedented happens it negatively impacts the ability for a scientific statistical process to predict the outcome. Science can’t predict things there’s no model for, and how do you can’t have a model for something you haven’t seen before. And a hell of a lot of unprecedented shit has happened. Maybe next time a convicted felon that tried to overthrow democracy runs in an election there can be accurate polling, but it’s not going to be the case in this election.
There really is no way to know what will happen on election day. So there’s else to do other than maximum effort until election day.
The issue isn’t really people on the fence for Trump or Harris but mainly with generating turnout. After Biden’s poor debate performance, people didn’t change their mind and decide to vote for Trump, they became apathetic and maybe wouldn’t show up to vote.
Harris doesn’t need to persuade people to abandon Trump, she needs to get people excited to show up to vote.
