Are Trump’s Polls Understating His Lead?
David Catron
6–7 minutes
During the two months since President Biden delivered his State of the Union address, a wide variety of legacy news outlets have been at pains to portray an infinitesimal improvement in his polling as a shift of momentum in the presidential race. Last week, for example, USA Today breathlessly reported that “Trump and Biden are ‘darn near even’ in the 2024 election.” If this was meant to provide moral sustenance for worried Democrats it was thin gruel indeed. Biden is an incumbent president struggling to keep up with a challenger most of whose time and money has been devoted to fighting off a ruthless lawfare campaign. Moreover, if history is any guide, it’s probable that the polls understate the strength of Trump’s support.
The voters remember the peace and prosperity of Trump’s tenure in office and they have had enough of Biden’s penury and warfare.
At present, the RealClearPolitics average indicates that Trump holds a narrow national lead. But the averages that really matter are those which show him ahead in all seven of the battleground states where the election will be decided. It’s a good bet that they are, once again, underestimating the number of votes that will be cast for Trump. Lest you have forgotten amidst the economic and cultural chaos that has attended the return of “the adults” to power, the 2020 polls undercounted Trump voters by wider margins than in 2016. At length, the American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR) commissioned a task force to assess how badly the polls performed. The conclusion was brutal:
Public opinion polls ahead of the 2020 election were the most inaccurate in a generation … The task force found that polling during the two weeks before the election overstated support for then-Democratic nominee Joe Biden by 3.9 percentage points, which was the largest polling error since 1980 when support for Democratic nominee 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 polling had indicated.
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https://spectator.org/are-trumps-polls-understating-his-lead/
