I don't have to tell you not to get cocky and to make sure every Trump-loving friend, family member, neighbor, and random acquaintance of yours gets out there and votes. But despite the narrative being pushed that this is a close election, there may be a chance that public pollsters who have been insistent that this race is going to be a nail-biter have been missing something big.
On Monday, veteran GOP strategist Alex Castellanos suggested that pollsters might be missing a key indicator in their analyses.
Pollsters have been getting it “wrong” in the final days of the 2024 presidential race by overlooking a “massive shift” in voter registration since the last election — which could tip the scales in favor of former President Donald Trump on Tuesday, a veteran GOP strategist says.
Alex Castellanos, who has worked on campaigns for Jeb Bush and Mitt Romney, told Fox News’ “Special Report” that the polls — which show a razor-thin margin between Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris — are disregarding a “wavelet out there of Republican enthusiasm.”
"What I think they’re missing is a massive shift in voter registration underneath all of this. Thirty-one states have voter registration by party. Thirty of them in the past four years have seen movement toward Republicans,” the longtime strategist said late Sunday.
“I think there’s, I’m not going to call it a wave, but I think there’s a wavelet out there of Republican enthusiasm and registration. If I register to vote Republican, whether I’m switching or new, what am I going to do?”
Reports of a Republican registration surge are nothing new, and we have seen evidence that pollsters are not taking these registration shifts into account. For example, the recent Des Moines Register poll by Ann Selzer didn't appear to take into account Republican registration gains statewide. Meanwhile, it seems like every poll we've seen lately (or most, anyway) have been showing nearly identical "coin flip" results.
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Castellanos argues that pollsters’ failure to account for the surge in GOP registrations is behind the lack of variation in poll results we've seen as we've gotten closer to the election.
“I think the pollsters are getting this wrong. We’re all missing something, because they’re giving us the same poll over and over again. There isn’t even statistical variation,” Castellanos said. “It’s like they’re telling us we’re watching a basketball game where every play’s a jump ball.”
It comes as a handful of fresh polling over the weekend showed six of the seven battleground states so close that they are within the margin of error — with the only one showing a clear leader being Arizona, where Trump is up by four points.
Trump captured a 49% to 45% advantage in the Grand Canyon State, while two others show him tied with Harris — with each getting 48% in Pennsylvania and 47% in Michigan, according to the final batch of swing state polling from the New York Times and Siena College.
Harris eked out narrow leads within the margin of error among likely voters in Nevada (49% to 46%), North Carolina (48% to 46%), Wisconsin (49% to 47%) and Georgia (48% to 47%).
Meanwhile, other prominent analysts — including polling data guru Nate Silver — have also begun raising questions about polls in recent days, alleging that some pollsters could be “herding” results with decisions aimed at showing a close race to avoid being an outlier.
So, if pollsters aren't accounting for Republican surges in their surveys and models, then there's a strong case to be made that Trump voters are being undercounted. That could be worth at least a one-point shift in his favor in key battleground states, and if that's the case, we may know the outcome of this election earlier than expected.
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