Dem
48
GOP
52
Speaking of numbers versus gut feel, our number-crunching is at the top of the page for all to see, and has been all cycle long. We are obviously at odds with all the other number-crunching aggregators, since we have Kamala Harris ahead of Donald Trump. Maybe they are out to lunch. Maybe we are.
What we CAN say is that our method is neither secret nor opaque. We include pollsters who are, in our judgment, good-quality pollsters, and we average their numbers, giving most or all of the weight to the last week's worth of polling. You can tell which pollsters we use, because we list them when we report their results. Despite all of this, we have been getting e-mails like these on a daily basis:
I have been visiting your website for many years and used to consider it pretty enjoyable. But this year you have lost me. Including some of the absurd right-wing polls in your map is just more than I can take. Some of them have even admitted to skewing things towards Trump in ways that make no sense. For example, some of these polls claim Republicans are a far greater percentage of the electorate than they have ever been. Some of them also show Trump getting 15-35% of the black vote. Really? How can you take them seriously at all? In 1964, Goldwater received 7% of the Black vote. Since then, the best they have done is 8%. When Trump is clearly a racist and his opponent is Black those numbers are clearly made up. I live in a very red area and travel frequently in other red states. There is very little enthusiasm anywhere for Trump. The number of signs, flags, etc. are way down and Harris signs are everywhere. When the election is over, I think your current chart will be pretty far from reality.
I've been a visitor to your site for many years. I remember when you announced that you were part of the "Americans Abroad" group. You were very objective at that time. Since then your site has taken a lot of left turns. This may be my final year visiting your site. It all depends how accurate your Electoral College map turns out to be. Good Luck!
You're using junk polls. Your website is now officially full of sh**.
At very least, these (many) correspondents don't seem to be aware that we don't include polls from partisan polling firms (unless they are working with a partisan firm from the other side), and we certainly don't include junk polls. Beyond that, however, we're not sure what these individuals are expecting us to do. If we start picking and choosing polls based on what we think the result should be, or based on which ones agree with our "gut feel," then we're no longer aggregating. We're just doing a version of what Cook and Sabato do, which is a very different thing.
And with things as close as they are, you can make good arguments in either direction. Consider this analysis of North Carolina, by reader H.W. in Cary, NC (who has a Ph.D. in statistics):
Well sports fans, it's game-on in North Carolina, which has evolved into a quintessential purple state. The two sides have contrasting strategies, but both can marshal strong arguments.
Why Trump can win: The main reason is turnout. In the past five presidential races, conservative turnout has exceeded liberal turnout by a wide margin. The sole exception was in 2008, in the wake of a near-miraculous campaign by Barack Obama to register Democratic (especially Black) voters and motivate them to vote. In 2024 early voting, Republicans turned out 63% of their registered voters compared with 59% of Democrats. This edge could continue in the Election Day voting, vindicating Trump's cynical strategy of riling up disaffected White (and some Black) males, especially younger ones, and eking out a close victory.
Why Harris can win: The Republicans' small lead in early-voter turnout could well be a "red mirage" generated by Trump's newfound embrace of early voting. There are too few Republicans left to retain a substantial advantage in the final tally. More significantly, this presidential election is the first one following the Dobbs decision and January 6th, coupled with Trump's increasingly repugnant and misogynistic speech and behavior. So, not surprisingly, there exists a well-documented "gender gap" of 10% or more. That is, Harris may be favored by females 55% to 45% (or more), and Trump favored by males, possibly with an equal margin. However, these would not counterbalance because there are many more female voters; among early voters, 55.6% were women, exceeding their 54% share of all registered voters in the Tar Heel State. Based on these early results, we can calculate that Harris is probably already leading and will be able to hang on in a photo finish.
Predicted final score: Harris 51%, Trump 49%
Thanks, H.W.!
Doing what H.W. did right there is rather harder than just aggregating, because it is very hard to filter out biases, wishful thinking, etc. This said, neither one of us has particular confidence in the polls this year, which is why we commenced the series on issues/concerns with polling. And, truth be told, we would have written about five more items in that series, but we ran out of time. There are a lot of facts on the ground that are very difficult to reconcile with the polling. For example, what about Kamala Harris' much stronger ground game? What about Harris' (apparent) much greater enthusiasm, as indicated by raising over $1 billion, in particular? Are we really to believe that substantial numbers of Black and brown men moved in Trump's direction, after having voted for two Democrats (one of them a woman) in the past two cycles? How could Harris be doing substantially worse than Joe Biden, given the tail winds provided by the abortion issue?
For better or worse, this item is our fairly rare opportunity to reveal what our guts are telling us, as opposed to relying on what the polls are saying. And so, here goes:
The PresidencyNote that we wrote these unaware of what the other had written. That they are remarkably similar... well, you know what they say about "great minds." Anyhow, that's how we have it. Now on to the readers... (Z)