by David Catron
DIn the two months since President Biden delivered his State of the Union address, many different news outlets have sought to portray the infinitesimal improvement in his poll numbers as a change in the dynamics of the presidential race. Last week, for example USA today she breathlessly reported that “Trump and Biden are almost evenly matched in the 2024 election.” If it was meant to provide moral support to worried Democrats, it was slender mush indeed. Biden is an incumbent president struggling to keep up with a challenger who has spent much of his time and money fighting a ruthless campaign of violations. Moreover, if history is any guide, it is likely that polls are underestimating the strength of Trump’s support.
Currently RealClearPolitics average indicates that Trump has a slight advantage domestically. But the averages that really matter are the ones that show him leading all seven battlefield states where the elections will be decided. You can bet they are once again underestimating how many votes were cast for Trump. Lest we forget, in the face of the economic and cultural chaos that has accompanied the return of “adults” to power, polls conducted in 2020 showed a greater undercount of Trump voters than in 2016. After all, the American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR) commissioned a task force to assess how bad the polls were. The conclusion was this brutal: :
Opinion polls ahead of the 2020 election were the most incorrect in a generation… The task force found that polls conducted two weeks before the election overestimated support for then-Democratic candidate Joe Biden by 3.9 percentage points, the largest polling error since time in 1980, when support for Democratic candidate Jimmy Carter was overestimated by 6 percentage points. The presidential election between Biden, the eventual winner, and incumbent President Donald Trump was much closer than polls indicated.
Task force leader, political scientist Josh Clinton from Vanderbilt University insisted that the problem has nothing to do with pollster bias, but that’s demanding to swallow considering that three of the most egregious polling failures of the last forty years (1980, 2016, and 2020) overestimated voter support for Democrats . After reading it, it becomes even less credible figure 11 full AAPOR report who candidly admits: “It is immediately obvious that polls are overstating the Biden-Trump lead in almost every state.” This phenomenon wasn’t constrained to the presidential race either. The 2020 overall vote favored Democrats for most of the year, but Republicans have changed their minds 15 seats in the House of Representatives for net profit 12.
So unless pollsters fix the problems that have plagued them in the last two presidential elections, it’s likely that Trump’s actual support among voters will be stronger than his polls suggest. This is especially significant in 2024 as Trump maintains a consistent lead in most national and swing polls for the first time since last fall. This was never the case in 2016 or 2020. Of course, it’s demanding to say exactly how far off the polls are this time, but if they understate Trump’s support as much as they did four years ago, he’ll win most of the key battleground states and the general election. Is this a real possibility? William A. Galston of the Brookings Institution deals with this really very seriously.
While polls do not reliably predict election outcomes in the distant future, they do provide insight into the dynamics of these contests. They are more like X-rays than snapshots, and facilitate us look beneath the surface to assess trends in different parts of the electorate. Here’s what they’re telling us now… Fewer and fewer countries are closely contested between the parties, and more and more are dominated by one side. By 2020, only seven states were really up for grabs, and Biden won six of them. For now, however, he is behind Trump in all seven.
Galston explains why this is such bad news for Biden. Referring to a recent Bloomberg poll, he I’m writing“For these states overall, about half of voters chose the economy or immigration as their most important issue.” Trump has more confidence in solving these problems. Galston expands on Biden’s battleground issues. In 2020, he won Arizona by 0.3%. Trump is leading now 5.0 percent, which means a change of 5.3 points. Biden won Georgia by 0.2%. Trump is leading now 3.8 percent, 4-point swing. He won Michigan by 2.8 percent. Trump is leading now 1.2 percent, another 4-point swing. Biden won Nevada with a 2.4% margin. Trump is leading now 4.5 percent, which means a change of 6.9 points. If Trump flips these states, that’s him wins.
This is true even if his current polling underestimates his actual strength. Trump will win every state he won in 2020, including North Carolina. This gives him 235 electoral votes. He will also win Georgia, which will give him 251 points. If he wins Pennsylvania, he’ll be there. Unfortunately, this probably won’t happen. Perhaps Michigan will win, which will give him 266 electoral votes. Then all I need is Nevada(6) Or Arizona (11) and is home. This is all assuming that Trump’s current poll numbers are precise. They are more likely to understate his support. Voters remember the peace and prosperity that accompanied Trump’s time in office. They are fed up with international conflicts and misery.
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David Catron is a recovering health care consultant and constant contributor to The American Spectator. You can follow Catron on X/Twitter at @Catronicus.
