After the release of a major New York Times/Siena College poll showing Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump neck-and-neck, the paper’s chief political analyst is warning liberal Americans to brace for a surprise on Election Day.
Trump famously outperformed most polling in both 2016 and 2020, and the Times’ Nate Cohn has identified a sign that he believes may foreshadow yet another shock for the Democrats.
The survey of 7,879 likely voters across seven key battleground states reveals a tight race between Harris and Trump.
Conducted via phone, the survey shows Harris holding narrow leads in several states: three points in Nevada, two points in both North Carolina and Wisconsin, and a single point in Georgia.
In Pennsylvania, the candidates are locked in a virtual tie, though Harris has a slight edge.
Trump, meanwhile, is leading in Michigan by a razor-thin margin and leads by four points in Arizona.
“Four years ago, the polls were thought to underestimate Mr. Trump because of nonresponse bias — in which his supporters were less likely to take surveys than demographically similar Biden supporters,” Cohn wrote in his analysis.
“Across these final polls, white Democrats were 16 percent likelier to respond than white Republicans,” Cohn continued.
“It raises the possibility that the polls could underestimate Mr. Trump yet again.
“We do a lot to account for this, but in the end there are no guarantees.”
Going further, Cohn discussed how the survey’s pattern aligns with past cycles.
Democrats, he says, are counting on “a lot of people” who didn’t vote for their party in 2020 or 2022 to show up on Tuesday in order to deliver Harris the close margins NYT/Siena identified:
“The pattern is fairly similar across the battlegrounds: Democrats lead in early voting; Republicans lead with what remains, and in each case it’s not by the sweeping margins of four years ago, when the pandemic upended the usual early voting patterns.
“There is a little bit of a leap of faith here for Democrats: They’re counting on a lot of people to vote on Election Day who didn’t in 2020 or 2022 …
“Their track records of voting give plenty of reason to think they will do so, but if not, the result will quickly look very different.”
The polling world was set ablaze this weekened by a slew of stunning survey releases, one which came from respected Iowa pollster Ann Selzer.
The shocking survey showed Harris leading Trump in Iowa, despite the longtime swing state’s hard-right turn to Trump in 2016 and 2020.
Selzer has faced a firestorm of backlash, with some accusing the polling veteran of pushing a pro-Harris result that could galvanize her female-dominated base in the waning days of the cycle.
Read through the Selzer crosstabs and… it’s just straight crazy. Here’s Selzer/2020 Exits
Overall: D+3/R+8
Senior Women: D+35/D+6
Senior Men: R+2/R+32
Indies: D+7/D+4
Women: D+20/D+3
Men: R+14/R+19
Rurals: R+20/R+28
Suburbs: D+23/R+3
No College: R+12/R+17
College: D+30/D+7— Ryan James Girdusky (@RyanGirdusky) November 3, 2024
Selzer correctly forecasted Trump to win the state in 2016 and 2020; it remains to be seen whether this starkly different survey will prove to be an outlier this time around.
Polling companies will poll.
We are supposed to believe that calling 1200 phones in the swing states will not vary when they call a DIFFERENT 1200 phones the next time. This doesn’t pass the Common Sense test! The only way for a correlation would be to question THE SAME PEOPLE each time. But they don’t!
So…every election we fret over “polls” that indicate little, if anything, about the election.
In reality, polls are designed to affect opinions, not to measure them. In essence, they are a sysop to “guide” your vote!