In the spirit of UNITY, I have a message for both parties:
Democrats, stop insinuating Republicans are uneducated morons.
Republicans, “insinuating” means hinting at something bad in an indirect way.
Here’s what’s been on my mind about polls for the last year or so…
In 2016, we all know that the national polls were basically accurate, giving Hillary Clinton the popular vote - and she did indeed win the popular vote. But the state polls were off significantly in the states that mattered for that election.
In 2017, with retooled polls, the off-year elections basically matched up with what the pollsters said.
In 2018, the polls predicted a blue wave, and it fully materialized, with Democrats even over-performing.
In 2019, the polls were still pretty accurate, but again, Democrats over-performed in special elections.
In 2020, the polls at all levels except the presidency underestimated Democratic support.
In 2021, the Democrats again over-performed versus the polls.
In 2022, Democrats not only over-performed, they completely obliterated the supposed “red wave” that was supposed to occur that year. It became a pink trickle, with Republicans taking the House by the barest thread, and Democrats unexpectedly increasing their lead in the Senate.
In 2023, Democrats over-performed again in special elections.
In this year’s early special election, Democrats are still over-performing versus the polls.
Democrats have been consistently exceeding the expectations set by polls since around 2018. And I have a hypothesis about it: Pollsters are basically fucked for the time being.
Here’s why:
- Phone polls are getting harder and harder to conduct. Especially with young people, who never answer calls to their cellphones from unknown numbers. So pollsters are relying more and more on the few landlines remaining, and the demographics of those respondents skew conservative. They can only do so much weighting to try to mitigate the problem of oversampling conservatives.
- Online polls and texting polls are improving, but still very hard to conduct in a scientifically rigorous manner.
- Young people are voting. This is a relatively new phenomenon, and the pollsters haven’t yet figured out how to properly predict the voting proclivities - and thus weight the answers - of young people who are much more engaged politically than previous generations.
I’ve held for some time that the polls between Biden and Trump might have anywhere from a four point to a nine point error in Trump’s favor. And that might apply to Harris and Trump as well.
So… Harris has a two-point lead in this poll. If the polling error hasn’t been fixed this cycle - and I don’t think it has - her real lead might be six points. And it might be eleven points.
I think there might be good reason to hope. BUT…
The pollsters might have figured their shit out. Maybe the polling error is fixed. There’s no way to know until the election. And here’s what we need to do: Prove that it’s not fixed yet and make Harris massively over-perform versus the polls. Sweep the motherfuckers out of the House and Senate while you’re at it. Show that the polls since 2017 have continued to underestimate Democratic support, and kick the fucking fascists in the fucking teeth - electorally speaking, of course.
Biden under performed his polling in 2020 almost every state; Trump over performed his polling almost across the board, almost every state. The fundamental issue with polling is that is measures demographic distribution, but not demographic engagement.
since we’re not talking about any other race right now, this point:
In 2020, the polls at all levels except the presidency underestimated Democratic support.
Is the only one that matters. On average Biden under formed by 4% (-4). On average, Trump over-performs (not down ballots, only Trump has this quality) by 8% (+8).
Just dropping Biden and we put 4 points back on the board. This is a great starting point. We should keep the +8 to Trump on the board when we look around. Trump polls at 42% favorability; he’s not the incumbent so some standard metrics like the gallup won’t help us here. We’re really going to be out over our handle bars a bit, but I think +8 is a good starting point to make safe bets on.
So to feel “good” about this, we should look to see Kamala up 8 points, which I don’t think is particularly challenging. I’m going to be putting down a couple bets for 3 weeks out that she’s in the 45+ range in the aggregate. She’s got a lot of meat that Biden left on the bone. There are easily 4 points available to her with an improved Israel/ Gaza policy. There are another 4 points available to her with some very basic policies like paid family leave and child tax credit.
Boom. Two things and she’s easily over the hump. Pick a Northern midwest Democrat and send them to signal your ME policy, or you do that and send your VP to GA/ NC and start working those states.
My called shot: This time next month (4-5 weeks), Kamala is poling at 45-48%; Trump will be polling at 38-42%.
There’s another reason I think too.
In 2016, it was embarrassing to be for Trump.
But after 2016, it became a purity test.
There’s likely households being called up where the person on the phone is legit scared of saying they aren’t MAGA if the other people in the house hear.
That’s likely far less common for any D households.
I would like us to roll through polling booths as a human voting tsunami so large people hundreds of years from now will speak of it like we do the mythical arrows that blocked out the sun. We need to hit the Right so fucking hard they begin hitting themselves in their confusion.
I want their entire party to eat itself and their modern ideology die. They need to Ouroboros the fuck off.
Then, after we have 200,000,000 d20’d their asses across every polling booth, we need to take our proud asses, mamba line up to our remaining politicians, and tell them to stop being fucking imbeciles because if we can come together for this, we can come together for their seats.
If a pollster called me and left a voicemail I’d probably call them back. Not sure how that changes the scientific rigor of the survey, but it would definitely get at least one more participate under 65.
(One of the few things I like about politics is that even at 42 I’m considered young.)
Great comment. It’s almost always best to assume it’s a dead-heat and every single vote matters. Strategically, even if you’re confident you are winning a land-slide, no campaign will ever say that because it risks some more casual voters going, “Ah this one is in the bag; others have this handled. I’m not going.”
While nationwide surveys give important signals of American support for political candidates, a handful of competitive states typically tilt the balance in the U.S. Electoral College, which ultimately decides who wins a presidential election.
The only poll that matters is in November
If that were the case, Biden would still be in the race. But his swing state polls were not getting better.
But that’s the point. This is a national poll, not polling in swing states. It’s encouraging, but not necessarily predictive of victory.
It’s like telling someone who has more yards in a football game. Yards are a good indicator of success, but winners are decided on points. Some points might require fewer yards. Winning in Wyoming is like a field goal after the other team fumbles on their own 20. Republicans get a lot of those simply by being bigots.
This is just starting. I’m always baffled by just how long it takes news to trickle into polling. You should expect her numbers to continue to gain for any where from two to three weeks out from this week. Most people are utterly tuned out and have been for a while, so it will take time.
A few other considerations as we watch her polling: Harris is getting real grass roots support. This is something Biden never had (barely in 2020, and very much not in 2024). Progressive groups are mobilizing now and the infrastructure is being set up as we speak, but Harris will have real advocacy at a grass-roots starting end of this week, and really coming online in another 2-4 weeks since it takes time to get set up, get volunteers, gets access to the van, etc.
I honestly believe that Biden only won in 2020 because of how badly Trump fumbled covid. Biden just was never able to energize the base like you’re saying. Covid did the work of energizing people for him. Even in 2022 it wasn’t that the dems were well liked or Biden helped down the ticket, it was that Trump endorsed the worst possible candidates.
Biden only won in 2020 because of how badly Trump fumbled covid
Oh 100%. And a dusty old boot could have beat him. Trump is and has always been an infinitely beatable candidate. Its just a matter of not running objectively weaker candidates like Hillary or Biden.
Biden won 2020 for two reasons: The DNC ratfucked Bernie in the primary (their words, not mine); and when it came time, Bernie was the bigger man and asked his constituents to support Biden in exchange for control of the platform (and the deal worked!).
Biden won the nomination because he kicked butt in the South so bad everybody else dropped out.
He always was kind of a weak candidate, but he won, and more importantly he made his win stick during the whole run up to the coup and after. He wasn’t in the news much then, but that took a cool head.
As with all the discussions on national polls, it’s necessary to point out that national polls have no meaning. We don’t have national elections.
Blue states are gonna blue state and red states are gonna red state, so the President will be decided by a handfull of states that don’t reliably vote one way or another, and frankly, we just don’t have enough good data on a Harris nomination to say one way or another.
Looking at the notable states I’ve looked at before, this data is from before Biden dropped out.
Arizona - Trump +6 vs Harris
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/president-general/2024/arizona/
Nevada - Trump +10 vs Harris
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/president-general/2024/nevada/
New Mexico - No data for Harris.
Georgia - Trump +5 vs Harris
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/president-general/2024/georgia/
North Carolina - Trump +4 vs Harris
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/president-general/2024/north-carolina/
Pennsylvania - Trump +4 vs Harris
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/president-general/2024/pennsylvania/
Michigan - Trump +5 vs Harris
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/president-general/2024/michigan/
Wisconsin - Tied.
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/president-general/2024/wisconsin/
Minnesota - No data for Harris.
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/president-general/2024/minnesota/
Harris also puts Virginia in play now as well, in what was assumed to be a blue state, now Trump +4.
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/president-general/2024/virginia/
So this is her starting point. She has 105 days to turn this around. The Democratic convention in August is key.
As of right now though? Here’s the map:
