Pollsters Admit Polling Isn't Science Or Even Art. It's Just News!
Don't stress. Vote.
Pollster Ann Selzer dropped her own November surprise on Saturday with a survey of Iowa that showed Vice President Kamala Harris leading Donald Trump 47 to 43 percent. Trump was up three points against Harris in Selzer’s September poll and was absolutely crushing President Joe Biden by 18 points in June.
Democrats were hopeful that the poll would show Trump up by no more than 10 points, ideally less. After all, the Selzer poll correctly predicted Hillary Clinton’s midwest losses in 2016. Its final poll of the election had Trump up seven points. He’d eventually win Iowa by almost 10 points and narrowly flip the Rust Belt with some kneecapping third-party assistance. Selzer’s final poll had Trump up over Joe Biden by seven points, a sobering indicator that the election would prove closer than anticipated.
Even if Harris doesn’t actually win Iowa — although the state could really like charismatic Black Democrats — the results are an encouraging sign that Harris could hold the Rust Belt and thus save democracy from Elon Musk.
The poll was conducted from October 28 through October 31, so just after Trump’s MAGA hate rally in Madison Square Garden. Women who are older and political independents are seemingly driving the late break to Harris. Independent women back Harris by a 28-point margin, and while senior voters overall prefer Harris, senior women support her by a two-to-one margin, 63 percent to 28 percent.
Roevember
Iowa passed a six-week abortion ban in July, which is effectively a total ban. The exception for rape requires that doctors actually confirm that the claim is “legitimate.” A rape victim could provide the doctor with a police report, but the majority of sexual assaults aren’t reported to the police. It’s also repulsive that women would need a permission slip from their rapist before they can have a medical procedure performed on their own body.
In a September poll, Iowa voters opposed the abortion law 59 to 37 percent, and 69 percent of Iowa women were opposed. That same moth, Trump’s lead in Iowa dropped to just four points. Steve Kornacki at NBC News pointed out that House Democratic candidates in Iowa have campaigned aggressively on the abortion law.
Women are rightly pissed, especially older women who remember what life was like for them before Roe v Wade. You don’t want to piss off older women because they reliably vote, unlike Trump’s coalition of basement dwelling incels.
The Trump campaign’s response to the Selzer poll was predictably bonkers. They released a rambling memo boosting the results in an Emerson poll that had Donald Trump ahead, while absurdly suggesting that he couldn’t possibly have lost ground among Iowa women voters based on how he performed against Joe Biden in 2020. This was before Trump’s Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and women lost a vital personal freedom. Women have died because of the Supreme Court Dobbs decision. It also doesn’t help that Trump is running an even more grotesquely misogynistic campaign than he did in 2020 and 2016.
A senior Republican strategist leaked internal polling from Iowa that showed Trump up five points in Iowa. That’s weird pushback, considering that Democrats would’ve celebrated an Iowa poll showing Harris down in Iowa by just five points.
Sunday morning, Trump, who insists on learning nothing, made an appeal to the truly aggrieved party — Iowa’s farmers: “I LOVE THE FARMERS AND THEY LOVE ME,” he posted in his usual unhinged all caps.
Meanwhile, Harris is campaigning in actual swing states and not desperately attempt to shore up Virginia or New Mexico.
Poll position
Nate Silver said it was “incredibly gutsy” for Ann Selzer to release a poll showing Kamala Harris up by three in Iowa. That was curious framing, considering that right-wing “red wave” pollsters have consistently dropped pro-Trump junk polls with insupportable assumptions, like Trump outright winning Latinos or performing 20 points better among Black voters than any Republican in 60 years. There is no explanation for these shifts, just “vibes.” Maybe Latino men don’t like how liberal academics use “Latinx.” (Yes, that was a real theory.) The Trump campaign has made no serious attempts at connecting with Black voters. Trump’s GOTV efforts are pathetic in general, so it’s doubtful that MAGA canvassers have ventured into Black swing state neighborhoods (especially since Trump himself keeps calling predominately Black areas hell holes).
Yet, despite all evidence that women voters are angry and turning out to vote in greater numbers than usual, even a mainstream pollster like Marist assumes women will be just 50 percent of the electorate in Pennsylvania. (They were 53 percent in 2020.)
The NBC poll that had the race effectively tied surveyed all registered voters, but Trump would need to get his angry male voters off the couch and to a polling place. Dressing like a garbage man is not an effective GOTV method.
Nate Cohn at The New York Times confessed something interesting about this election’s polling practices:
“It’s hard to overstate how traumatic the 2016 and 2020 elections were for many pollsters,” he said. “For some, another underestimate of Mr. Trump could be a major threat to their business and their livelihood. For the rest, their status and reputations are on the line. If they underestimate Mr. Trump a third straight time, how can their polls be trusted again? It is much safer, whether in terms of literal self-interest or purely psychologically, to find a close race than to gamble on a clear Harris victory.”
Cohn added, “When their results come in very blue, they don’t believe it. And frankly, I share that same feeling: If our final Pennsylvania poll comes in at Harris +7, why would I believe it? As a result, pollsters are more willing to take steps to produce more Republican-leaning results. (We don’t take such steps.)”
The New York Times in particular has based its political reporting around its own polls. Yet, Cohn posted on social media Sunday, “A final point that I ‘hope’ is obvious from the whole of my work, but may not be obvious if you only read individual snippets: I have no idea whether our polls (or any polls) polls be "right", too good for Harris, or too good for Trump. No one does.”
Despite all the hand-wringing from pollsters, MAGA will still cry foul over any polling result they don’t like. The final Times/Siena polls on Sunday showed a deadlocked race leading into Election Day, but the Trump camp released a memo accusing them of releasing “voter suppression” polls intended to damp MAGA enthusiasm. They probably looked closely at the cross tabs showing Harris consolidating support among key Democratic demographics and winning late deciders — that key group broke overwhelmingly for Trump in 2016 and 2020. Without the James Comey letter, Hillary Clinton would’ve probably won. If Democrats had campaigned traditionally in 2020 (they avoided canvassing door to door due to covid), Biden might have won more decisively
Pollsters like Cohn are also overly concerned about underestimating Trump’s white working class support but his winning coalition in 2016 also included anti-Trump Republicans, especially in the suburbs, who wound up holding their noses and supporting the candidate they believed would best advance their policies (if only Jill Stein voters had been so practical).
Matt Grossman, a political scientist at Michigan State University, told Vox’s Jeff Stein that “Republican-leaning women and conservatives who hadn’t made up their minds almost all ended up voting for Trump.” They might have been on the fence about Clinton and even Biden but a reasonable number seem, at long last, done with Trump.
Polls must make certain predictions about the electorate — who will turn out and in what numbers. A younger, more diverse, and more female electorate is good for Democrats. What’s encouraging is that Trump isn’t doing much to turn out his supporters. His campaign has zero presence in swing states where the Harris campaign is knocking on doors and talking to voters. Harris wants to win. Trump wants to whine.
“While senior voters overall prefer Harris, senior women support her by a two-to-one margin, 63 percent to 28 percent.”
“Women are rightly pissed, especially older women who remember what life was like for them before Roe v Wade. You don’t want to piss off older women because they reliably vote.”
“It’s … repulsive that women would need a permission slip from their rapist before they can have a medical procedure performed on their own body.”
“Women have DIED because of the Supreme Court Dobbs decision.”
I just wanted to repeat these solid statements from Stephen. This is it, right here. As the current paraphrase of James Carville’s classic line goes: “It’s Abortion, Stupid.”
Women have been harangued all election season to “Vote like your life depends on it!” and “White women need to get out and vote for Kamala, otherwise we’ll lose!” As if WE DIDN’T KNOW THAT. As if it’s totally upon the shoulders of America’s women to save the country. As if somehow women vote stronger and harder than men, so if the unspeakable happens, once again, it will be women’s fault, somehow.
What would have been useful would have been MEN showing up at pro-choice rallies, or saying out loud that abortion rights is their No. 1 issue rather than mumbling generic platitudes about the economy or climate change. It doesn’t need excuse-framing like “I want a better world for my daughter/sister/granddaughter.” It’s okay to frame women’s rights simply as human rights, because we are human beings.
WOMEN ARE DYING. NOW.
It’s Abortion, Stupid.
The final line of this amazing post is actually a great bumper sticker for the campaign.
Ultimately, the backing of a lot of these pollsters is McCain's Law...there cannot be good news for Democrats. It also is a big help from Murc's Law, because well you just can't do anything about Republicans wilding out and ripping you to shreds if you provide coverage they don't like. Democrats just sit and take it. And if that isn't emblematic of the shambolic state of mainstream media I don't know what is!
In the end let's get past the useless concern-trolling of Republican-owned mass media, scaredy-cat pollsters, and the unreconstructed party's voter suppression and bring it home.
If you are voting on Election Day and encounter long lines, remember that is a deliberate policy choice. It's how unreconstructed states remain unreconstructed. Look for mutual aid...sometimes you can befriend people in line and get them to hold your place if you have need (for example, the long lines are ableist as they disenfranchise those with health and/or mobility issues).
Let's mount up and save America!