If you’re hoping the final polls before Election Day will give a clear picture of the presidential race, you’re hoping in vain.
Almost any theory about what will happen Tuesday has received some new piece of polling evidence supporting the final vote — and some new evidence also casting doubt on it.
Are late decision makers breaking for Trump or Harris? Are the polls again missing Trump voters — or have they corrected such that they’re significantly underestimating Democrats? Is Harris performing better in the Rust Belt battlefield or the Sun Belt?
The final batch of polls does not provide unanimous answers to any of these questions, and uncertainty about the results is more than ever.
What Democrats hope is the fact that late decision-makers are making a break for Harris (perhaps nudged by Trump’s controversial Madison Square Garden rally last week). Elections in some new states have indicated that may be true. New York Times in its report Final state elections found that “among the 8 percent of voters who said they had decided their vote recently,” Harris “won the group 55 percent to 44 percent.”
And yet the final batch of national polls actually went Trump’s way, and the average now shows Harris’ national lead shrinking. 1 point or less – His youngest in months. If there is a national trend in favor of Harris, we would expect it to show up in the final national poll, but it isn’t there.
Final state polling averages, meanwhile, show a race largely deadlocked, with 1 point or less separating the candidates. almost every swing state. but Nat Silver argued There are clear signs of widespread pollster “fleeting” – that, like sheep, pollsters are adjusting their results to get closer to expected results.
Statistical principles suggest that, if the race is truly tied, most polls should show a close tie. But with some polls showing a clear lead for any candidate, there should also be a fair amount of diversity, and we’re getting very little of that this year. “At least as many polls show a margin as close as 1 in 9.5 trillion,” Silver wrote.
But is ranching hurting one candidate more than another? Both parties have reason to hope that they are not losing support in the polls. Republicans argue that pollsters underestimated Trump’s support in 2016 and 2020. It could happen again: New York Times chief polling analyst Nate Cohn wrote Sunday that, In the final Times poll, “White Democrats were 16 percent more likely to respond than white Republicans,” which “raises the possibility that the polls may be underestimating” Trump once again.
Others suspect that pollsters have overcorrected to the point that they are now overestimating Trump’s support. Highly respected Iowa Pollster J. Anne Selzer A poll that shocked the political world on Saturday showed Harris winning his state by a margin of 3, despite widespread perceptions that it was a safe Trump state. Some theorize Selzer is a shift toward Democrats that other pollsters missed, but others suspect his vote is just an outlier that won’t actually match the results.
The specifics of the swing state map are also highly uncertain. The average shows Harris has a very slight edge in Michigan and Wisconsin, while Pennsylvania is mostly tried. They generally show slight Trump edges in Georgia, North Carolina and Nevada — and Trump’s more significant lead in Arizona. This suggests that Harris’ best path to victory is to retain the rust belt.
but New York Times/Siena College Poll The map released Sunday blows away much of the wind, showing Harris ahead in Georgia, North Carolina and Nevada, and Wisconsin — with Pennsylvania and Michigan stuck in a tie. (Arizona still went pretty solidly to Trump.) Even if the tied states went to Trump, those leads would be enough for a narrow Harris Electoral College victory.
How much stock should we put in Selzer Poll?
The usual advice from election wonks to explain the flood of votes is to “stick with the average.” Looking at individual polls can be interesting, but any individual poll can be an outlier, and for partisans, the temptation to cherry-pick and see what you want to see is strong.
From Monday morning The New York Times average Show:
- Harris leads Wisconsin by 1 point
- Harris leads by less than 1 point in Michigan
- Tie in Pennsylvania
- Trump leads by less than 1 point in North Carolina and Nevada
- Trump leads by 1 point in Georgia
- Trump leads by 3 points in Arizona
If those results are shown on Election Day, the election is decided by who wins Pennsylvania. And yet we must not assume that they will be the result of selection. Final state polling averages often differ by a few points from the results. And given that many of these final averages show a difference of 1-point or less, the only reasonable way here is: It’s really close.
Now, some number crunchers qualify the “sticking with the average” advice by saying that perhaps there are some pollsters who stand out from the rest and deserve at least some special attention. That elite class includes Selzer’s Iowa poll and the New York Times/Siena College National Poll.
Both have won respect in past election cycles for their lack of herding — coming in results that missed the national polling average.
In 2016, Selzer’s final vote Show Trump 7 Other polls show a close race in Iowa. Trump won the state by more than 9 points. In 2020, most pollsters again Shows a close competitionBut Selzer got Trump a 7 and he got an 8 to win.
So Selzer is a pollster who has no Underestimated Trump – He correctly estimated his state’s support for Trump in the past two cycles. and his final vote Looks awful Harris beat him by 3 points.
Theories to explain this are flying around the political world. Did Selzer see something unique happening in Iowa — perhaps a backlash against state Republican austerity Anti-abortion laws? More grandiosely, some theorize that he may be one of the only people capturing the national backlash toward Democrats, which other herdsmen pollsters refuse to believe.
Alternatively, nobody is perfect, and even the best pollsters will sometimes be wrong due to random chance, so maybe he’s wrong!
The New York Times/Siena College poll also has a reputation for avoiding herding, but it Final swing state election Bit of a mixed bag for Harris.
Curiously, the Times poll shows Harris at 2 in Wisconsin (the 2020 tipping point state), 3 in Nevada (a state where some early poll analysts thought Republicans looked strong), and up 2 in North Carolina (a state Trump won in both of his previous runs). Trump held four rallies in North Carolina in the final days of the campaign, which some interpreted as a sign that his party is worried about its chances in the state.
But the Times poll shows Michigan and Pennsylvania tied, perhaps a sign that Harris can’t rely on the Rust Belt after all. They also show a 1-point difference in Georgia that we probably shouldn’t put too much stock in.
All in all the picture is clear as mud. Elections don’t tell us who will win. We could be set up for a gut-wrenchingly close contest. Or any candidate can outscore their polls by a few points and win pretty solidly. The only way to find out is to count the votes.
