Despite the recent return of Democratic optimism associated with the Harris-Walz ticket, there are a few stubborn fears that keep partisans awake at night. Here’s a review of four of them that I wrote at New York:
Democrats are in a vastly better state of mind today than they were a couple of months ago, when Joe Biden was their presidential candidate and his advocates were spending half their time trying to convince voters they were wrong about the economy and the other half reminding people about how bad life was under President Trump. While it’s possible this would have worked in the end when swing voters and disgruntled Democrats alike took a long look at Trump 2.0, confidence in Biden’s success in November was low.
Now that the Biden-Harris ticket has morphed into Harris-Walz, there’s all sorts of evidence from polls, donor accounts, and the ranks of volunteers that Democrats can indeed win the 2024 election. But at the same time, as Barack Obama and others warned during the Democratic National Convention, the idea that Kamala Harris can simply float on a wave of joy and memes to victory is misguided. She did not get much, if any, polling bounce from a successful convention, and there are abundant signs the Harris-Trump contest is settling into a genuine nail-biter.
While the September 10 debate and other campaign events could change the trajectory of the race, it’s more likely to remain a toss-up to the bitter end. And many fear, for various reasons, that in this scenario, Trump is likelier to prevail. Here’s a look at which of these concerns are legitimate, and which we can chalk up to superstition and the long tradition of Democratic defeatism.
One reason a lot of Democrats favor abolition of the Electoral College is their belief that the system inherently favors a GOP that has a lock on overrepresented rural states. That certainly seemed to be the case in the two 21st-century elections in which Republicans won the presidency while losing the national popular vote (George W. Bush in 2000 and Donald Trump in 2016). And in 2020, Joe Biden won the popular vote by a robust 4.5 percent but barely scraped by in the Electoral College (a shift of just 44,000 votes in three states could have produced a tie in electoral votes).
However, any bias in the Electoral College is the product not of some national tilt, but of a landscape in which the very closest states are more Republican or Democratic than the country as a whole. In 2000, 2016, and 2020, that helped Republicans, but as recently as 2012 there was a distinct Electoral College bias favoring Democrats.
To make a very long story short, there will probably again be an Electoral College bias favoring Trump; one bit of evidence is that Harris is leading in the national polling averages, but is in a dead heat in the seven battleground states that will decide the election. However, it’s entirely unclear how large it will be. In any event, it helps explain why Democrats won’t feel the least bit comfortable with anything less than a solid national polling advantage for Harris going into the home stretch, and why staring at state polls may be a good idea.
For reasons that remain a subject of great controversy, pollsters underestimated Donald Trump’s support in both 2016 and in 2020. But the two elections should not be conflated. In 2016, national polls actually came reasonably close to reflecting Hillary Clinton’s national popular-vote advantage over Trump (in the final RealClearPolitics polling averages, Clinton led by 3.2 percent; she actually won by 2.1 percent). But far less abundant 2016 state polling missed Trump’s wafer-thin upset wins in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, largely due to an under-sampling of white non-college-educated voters. The legend of massive 2016 polling error is probably based on how many highly confident forecasts of a Clinton win were published, which is a different animal altogether.
There’s no question, however, that both national and state polling were off in 2020, which is why the narrow Biden win surprised so many people. Two very different explanations for the 2020 polling error have been batted around: One is that the COVID pandemic skewed polling significantly, with Democrats more likely to be self-isolated at home and responding to pollsters; the other is that the supposed anti-Trump bias of 2020 polls simply intensified. The fact that polls in the 2018 and 2022 midterm elections were quite accurate is consistent with either interpretation.
So we really don’t know if polling error is a given in 2024, or which candidate will do better than expected. A FiveThirtyEight analysis of polling error since 1998 shows a very small overestimation of the Democratic vote across 12 election cycles. It might be prudent, then, to expect that Trump might exceed his polling numbers by a bit, but not necessarily by a lot.
A lot of election forecasts (or model-based projections) incorporate, to varying degrees, what are known as “fundamentals,” i.e., objective factors that are highly correlated historically with particular outcomes. There are models circulating in political-science circles that project presidential-election results based mostly or even entirely on macroeconomic indicators like GDP or unemployment rates. Others take into account presidential approval ratings, the positive or negative implications of incumbency, or historical patterns.
While forecasts vary in how to combine “fundamentals” with polling data, most include them to some extent, and for the most part in 2024 these factors have favored Trump. Obviously the substitution of Harris for Biden has called into question some of these dynamics — particularly those based on Biden’s status as an unpopular incumbent at a time of great unhappiness with the economy — but they still affect perceptions of how late-deciding voters will “break” in November.
A final source of wracked Democratic nerves is the very real possibility — even a likelihood — that if defeated, Trump will again reject and seek to overturn the results. Indeed, some MAGA folk seem determined to interfere with vote-counting on and beyond Election Night in a manner that may make it difficult to know who won in the first place. Having a plan B that extends into an election overtime is a unique advantage for Trump; for all his endless talk about Democrats “rigging” and “stealing” elections, you don’t hear Harris or her supporters talking about refusing to acknowledge state-certified results (or indeed, large batches of ballots) as illegitimate. It’s yet another reason Democrats won’t be satisfied with anything other than a very big Harris lead in national and battleground-state polls as November 5 grows nigh.
I am with Grok. For example, Zogby predicted Ryan over Blagojevich in Illinois by a wide margin in 2002.
If Sept. 11 never happened, Bush would probably be winning — we wouldn’t have invaded Iraq
Are you sure about that? Even Paul O’Neil would beg to differ.
It’s All Good. He barely won when no one knew who he was, now they do, and if the silence of my conservative friends means anything, it means they are ashamed.
When the GOP won a small number of seats in 2002 (+5 in the House, +2 in the Senate net gains), they won on the back of GWBush, whose approval ratings were 70 approve/26 disapprove (USA/Gallup). Bush now has an anemic 46 approve/51 disapprove (USA/Gallup)! 42% LV want a generic Democrat for Congress, only 37% LV want a Republican (rasmussenreports) and Democrats have been preferred for a solid month! Bush will not have as much time to focus on boosting his congressional colleagues as he HAD TO in 2002. He has his own record to (try to) defend! Many moderate Republican candidates already will have to distance themselves from Bush because he is so unpopular! Even in a conservative district like KY-6, Republicans face defeat if they run on Bush’s record! Winning a Democratic seat by twelve points in a district that went for Bush 55-42% in the 2000 elections, shows just how vulnerable Republicans are in Congress! (dnc website: democrats.org) Democrats are in good shape to pick up another seat for South Dakota’s Representative in a June 1st election! (dnc website: democrats.org, http://www.hersethforcongress.org) Republicans are clearly vulnerable up and down the ballot! Great turnout in November and abyssmal job approval of Republic policies and GWBush means democrats may just be taking back Congress AND the White House!
Why LV doesn’t track RV: One thing people often get wrong is the fact that the SAME sample of 1,000 voters or so produce both the RV and the LV numbers. The difference is, the LV calculation includes one more “weight” for each response. So if, in the pollster’s mostly subjective opinion, a certain percentage of registered R’s is likely to vote in November, and a certain percentage of men, and of older voters, and you are an older R man, your answers get “counted” more than, say, a young D woman. Problem is, this early in an election cycle, you can’t really rely on whether people SAY they’re going to vote, because who the heck knows? Most people aren’t paying attention yet. So you go with past elections as your model. Which is patently silly, since all elections are different (this one, I’m guessing, particularly so).
Just remember that when a poll produces both LV and RV numbers, all that’s happening is the pollster is subjectively multiplying the Kerry and Bush numbers from the RV poll with some factor he/she’s come up with based on whatever ideosyncratic technique she/he wants. We can do the same thing. I, for one, believe loads of Dems will show up this Fall who didn’t in 2000. So my LV poll will take a decent RV sample, say Gallup’s, and “increase” (via weighting by a factor of 1.1) the Dem sample by 10%. So my LV result, which basically has as much credibility as Gallup’s, will show Kerry with a 3-4 point lead among LV’s.
It’s all a game right now. As Ruy says, stick with the RV’s until, oh, about Labor Day.
The latest gallup poll also shows among that national adults (both registered voters and unregistered adults) Kerry is doing better and/or Bush is doing worse on most dates, granted by small margins. But these findings are repeated themselves and show that registering more voters, especially in swing states and in targeted urban/suburban/ideopolis areas is more likely to aid Kerry rather than Bush. This shows that increased effort into voter registration/mobilization efforts will likely pay large dividends for Democrats in 2004. To any and all encouraged by this prospect, I urge you to volunteer your time and energy (or even just donate) to the voter registration efforts like those by America Coming Together or your local Democratic Party or labor union or church congregation. We need all the help we can get and there is certainly good reason to believe that all this help will pay off up and down the ballot. Wouldn’t it be great to give President Kerry a like-minded Congress as well! Republicans are vulnerable! THis is the year we can take back our country!
While Iraq tragedies are taking away from Kerry being able to keep his face in the main stream press, I keep reading that Bush has taken away the economy and jobs as a campaign issue. Not so, I say. I have been skeptical of the last two months jobs numbers and now realize that I am not alone. John Crudele of the New York Post has an interesting article discussing this today. Too bad the rest of the United States electorate does not read this. If the information in this article were known by the public, coupled with the Bush failures in Iraq, plus the failures of his War on Terrorism, this elction would be (as George Tenet would say) a slam dunk.
So what CAN Kerry do about Iraq? Oh politically its all good, but substantively I’m depressed about it.
Zogby was the only one to accurately predict Gore’s 2000 victory, but he’s missed some biggies, too. He’s the Sammy Sosa of polling–when he hits it, he hits it square, but when he misses it’s brutal.
The information on polls given in above posts for ncpp.org and ayresmchenry.com are not available. There are no such web sites unless the wrong information was given. I tried accessing these sites twice and they do not exist nor is there a link at 2.004k.com.
If John Kerry loses this election I’m moving out of the country. If GWB is reelected after all the crap that’s come out in just the past year, I’ll give up all hope. The crazy thing is that there’s so much controversy about GWB’s administration that something like the leaking of Plume’s identity has taken a total backseat. In any other administration, I think this issue alone would’ve dominated the news cycle for a good long time. Forget about how the administration shifted $700mm to prepare for an invasion of Iraq.
It really is unbelievable how much this administration has TOTALLY SCREWED UP everything they’ve tried to do. But even with all the foul-ups, NOBODY has been fired or even resigned! Apparently accountability is only an issue for anyone who is not involved with the Bushies. I wish someone would replay the testimony of Wolfowitz when he testified that Shinseki’s opinion it would take several hundred thousand troops to stabilize Iraq as “irresponsible and way off base.”
This is kind of off topic, but this is a reeeeally good site:
http://home.comcast.net/~gerrydal/
it’s somebody’s allocation of electoral points, but it’s based on recent polls, etc. i am most interested in how competitive states like Maryland, Arkansas, and Georgia are.
Sept 11’s effect on Bush’s popularity is a little complicated.
If Sept. 11 never happened, Bush would probably be winning — we wouldn’t have invaded Iraq, budget wouldn’t be such a mess, and most importantly the economy would be doing quite well.
Sept 11 gave Bush a huge boost and at first he deserved it for leadership against Al Qaeda — but the fact is he completely screwed up the War on Terror and created this fiasco in Iraq. This is becoming apparent to more people every day.
Which, by the way, ought to be the basic line of attack for Democrats — not that Bush is a liar or an evil person, but that he simply has made a mess of everything.
Here’s another poll, released today by Ayres, McHenry & Associates:
http://www.ayresmchenry.com/docs/AMA%20National%20Survey%20Packet.pdf
It has results broken down by Red, Blue and Purple states. Kerry seems to be doing better than Bush in the purple swing states.
( link found at http://2.004k.com/latest/ )
A report on the accuracy of various 2000 election-eve polls is available at:
http://www.ncpp.org/poll_perform.htm
Sept 11 was THE best thing that ever happened to gwb…While im dismiissive of the stories that he knew about it, I honestly dont believe he would take
it back if he could. The tragedy provided him with
political capital he otherwise never would have
The most striking thing about Bush’s poll numbers is the steady, almost linear downtrend ever since he took office. The fact that he was able to squander the huge overnight boost he received on 9/12/01 just shows he is a fundamentallly flawed politician. Where would his support be today if it weren’t for Osama and those 20 terrorists?
Why would his RV go up 6 points, at the exact same time as his LV went down 1 point?
My guess is, there’s a little statistical noise there. Probably, if there had been a bigger sample size, both categories would have been up 2 or 3 points.
I believe that the reason Zogby’s final poll
in 2000 was more accurate than the others was
simply that he kept polling on Monday, the day before
the election, while the others stopped on Sunday.
As you may recall, there was a shift toward Gore at
the end, and the other pollsters missed part of it
because of stopping polling on Sunday.
Does anyone besides me find it utterly appaling that these polls show there is a big segment of the voting public out there that is “for war” when it seems we are WINNING and “against war” when we seem to be LOSING?
In other words, this specimen doesn’t care what the purpose of the war is — just that we win. ” Go ahead and glass some towel heads and I’ll see you at Starbucks.” And I am sure when you ask them they think the war was justified — or not — on “principle.”
I need a drink.
Unlike some people I have no interest in an impeachment. The thugs proved in ’98 that impeachment is just a parlimentary strong-arm tactic. What I want is an electoral count of 538-0 come November.
thanks. zogby seemed like the best bet.
In 2000, almost all polls predicted GWB as the popular vote winner by 2 or 3 points. Zogby called it a dead heat, and also made the right call on every state but one. (Never can remember whether it was OR or NM.)
speaking as a horse-race obsessive: anybody have a recommendation of which poll presents the most accurate information?
I know . . . I know . . . polling is an art not a science. but still, it’d be helpful to have a sense of which poll is the best to watch. and obsess over.
woo hoo!!!!! goodbye george bush!!!!
not the most substantive response, but justified.
anyway, I’d agree w/ zogby that this election is kerry’s to lose.
fingers crossed.