Oct.23

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PollWatch 2024, Part IV: The Senate Gap

One of the things that stands out about this year's polling is the rather sizable gap between the numbers of the Democratic candidates for president (Joe Biden and Kamala Harris) and the numbers of the Democratic candidates for Senate. We thought we'd take a look at that, and see if things are out of line with the elections of the recent past.

First, here are the numbers as they currently stand. We're going to look at states that are: (1) among the 10 most competitive states in the presidential race, and (2) have a Senate race this year. States that fulfill only one of those two requirements tend to have wonky numbers that aren't very instructive. We are going to use FiveThirtyEight's polling averages, as that site tends to be pretty evenhanded in the polls they include (as compared, in particular, to Real Clear Politics). The difference column reflects how the presidential candidate is doing relative to the Senate candidate. In other words, "-3%" means the presidential candidate is running three points behind the Senate candidate.

That's seven states, then, that are among the 10 most competitive states in the presidential election AND that have a Senate race this year. Georgia, North Carolina, and Iowa are the three that don't make the list, by virtue of having no Senate seat up for election.

The presidential gap (last column) is the sum of the gap between Trump and his party's senator and Harris and her party's senator. In all cases, as you can see, Trump is running ahead of the GOP candidate and in all cases but one, Harris is running behind the Democratic candidate. If something's wacky, then the presidential gap would theoretically be bigger in this year's election than in past elections. We are writing this before compiling the numbers, however, so whether or not there's something odd going on in 2024 will be almost as much a surprise to us as it will be to readers.

Here are the actual results for states that met the above criteria in 2020:

Once again, we have seven entries, because while four of the ten-most-close presidential states did not have a Senate election (Florida, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin) there were two Senate seats up in Georgia.

Now, the 2016 numbers:

Once again, seven entries. That will happen when states have (at least) two U.S. Senate elections per every three election cycles. This time, the close-for-president states that are omitted are Maine, Michigan and Minnesota.

We recognize that this is a pretty basic analysis, but several things do stand out:

• In the past, Donald Trump ran behind the GOP Senate candidate 60% of the time, and ahead of them 40% of the time. This year, as noted, he's ahead of all seven Republican candidates. And 100% is rather more than 40%.
  
  
• Not coincidentally, if the current numbers were to hold, seven of the eight largest gaps between Trump and his U.S. Senate "partner" would be this year. The only non-2024 election that would make the top eight is the 2020 Minnesota contest where Trump ran ahead of Jason Lewis by 1.8%.
  
  
• While Donald Trump's totals here do not much correlate with the year (his four best numbers here, for example, are from 2020, then 2024, then 2020, then 2016), Kamala Harris' numbers are mostly at the bottom of the list. She is more likely to grow her total than he is, it would seem.
  
  
• If the current numbers were to hold, Kamala Harris would only run ahead of one Democratic Senate candidate (Amy Klobuchar in Minnesota). That's unusual; her two immediate predecessors ran ahead of their Senate "partner" about 60% of the time.
  
  
• The tables show 10 elections where the results of the two presidential candidates diverged (or would diverge) by 3.0% or more, and seven of them are this year's elections. If that held, then 2024 would be the ticket-splittingest election in recent memory.

So yes, the Senate gap this year is larger than it has been in either of Donald Trump's other elections. There are numerous possible explanations for this, among them that it's a small sample size that could be affected by one or two unusual elections (John McCain on the ticket, Kari Lake on the ticket), that Kamala Harris is weaker than Hillary Clinton/Joe Biden, or that Donald Trump 2024 is stronger than Donald Trump 2020 or Donald Trump 2016. But one very plausible explanation is that the pollsters are underrating Harris by a couple of points. If so, that small difference would be very big, indeed. (Z)