There is no denying that we love it and hate election polling. Even when we know deep down that they are not perfect and are often wrong, polls, for better or worse, serve as our compass during an election season. They were wrong in 2020, and they were wrong in 2016. Still, through each cycle, a discernible amount of truth oozes out.
For example, In both 2016 and 2020, Donald Trump overwhelmingly trailed in the polls. In both cases, however, he outperformed the polls. The 2020 election was a particularly interesting one because not once during the campaign did he ever have a lead in the RealClearPolitics average. At face value, the polls were ridiculously wrong because, in the end, the election was decided by less than 50,000 votes over a few select battleground states.
Today, however, the election is very different. Trump leads in most of the polls, and he has led in the RealClearPolitics average since mid-September. It’s a close race based on national polling, but considering that polls have consistently underestimated his support, even if the polls are wrong, there’s no reason not to believe that Trump is doing better in 2024 than he did in either 2020 or 2016.
It’s not just national polls, either. Trump is leading Biden in nearly all of the battleground states. Political experts on both sides of the aisle say that if the election were held today, he’d win. Naturally, the liberal media tries its hardest to find silver linings whenever possible.
Earlier this year, Newsweek, citing a few cherrypicked polls, declared, "Joe Biden is Finally Beating Donald Trump in Polls Again.” One such poll was a Quinnipiac University survey showing Biden up six points nationally against Trump with independent voters favoring Biden by twelve points. The poll made zero sense and was an outlier, but the media couldn’t help but pounce on it.
Last month, Newsweek once again played up an obvious outlier poll from Franklin & Marshall showing Biden up by double digits in Pennsylvania — a huge swing to Biden considering the pollster's previous survey showed Biden up by a mere point. At the time, I was confident enough to call the poll an outlier, and indeed, I’ve been proven right.
Save for one poll showing the race tied in Pennsylvania, every poll since that Franklin & Marshall one has shown Trump ahead, with one showing the race tied. Currently, Trump has a +2.1 point average lead in the state, his highest spread of the campaign.
I’ve been following the polls enough this campaign to have a good eye for outliers. And, another one has popped up that you can bet the media is going to be excited about.
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This poll comes out of Nevada, where Trump has had a consistent lead over Biden since November. The poll from Bloomberg/Morning Consult shows Trump and Biden tied in the Silver State. Normally, this wouldn’t seem like much of an outlier, but Trump has had such a consistent lead in the polls there, sometimes even outside the margin of error, that something doesn’t quite sit right. Even an apples-to-apples comparison of this survey to previous ones from the same pollster makes it clear something doesn’t make sense.
The previous Bloomberg/Morning Consult poll, conducted a month earlier, had Trump up eight points. Can anyone suggest a legitimate reason to explain an eight-point swing toward Biden over the past month? I certainly can’t.
Does anyone really believe Nevada has swung eight points toward Biden in the past month? pic.twitter.com/dYGop9HNCR
— Matt Margolis (@mattmargolis) May 22, 2024
In fairness, the recently released New York Times/Siena poll showing Trump up 13 points in the state also feels like an outlier to me. But considering that their previous survey released in November showed Trump up 11 points, it’s at least somewhat consistent, even if their methodology is overly favoring Trump.
But this all goes back to the problem that is inherent and unavoidable in polling. Polls aren’t an exact science, and regardless of whether you like the results of certain polls or not, you have to approach them with healthy skepticism and from as broad a view as possible.
