Key state polls: Another mess in the making?
By
Byron York
September 5, 2024 3:59 pm
.
KEY STATE POLLS: ANOTHER MESS IN THE MAKING? Who is leading the presidential race in the seven states considered most critical to victory in 2024: Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona, and Nevada?
The answer is we don’t really know. If you look at the RealClearPolitics average of state polls, you’ll see that Pennsylvania is exactly tied between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump; in Michigan, Harris is up by 1.1 points; in Wisconsin, Harris is up 1.4 points; in North Carolina, Trump is up by 0.7 points; in Georgia, Harris is up by 0.1 points; in Arizona, Trump is up by 1 point; and in Nevada, Harris is up by 0.6 points.
Obviously, all those numbers are within the polls’ margins of error. So anyone who cites them is advised to be cautious. But even more caution is called for when you look at the performance of state polls in the 2020 presidential election.
The purpose of a polling average is to avoid some of the errors of individual polls by grouping a bunch of them together. So instead of looking at one or two particularly accurate or terrible polls, look at how the group performed. But some averages are better than others, and all can be wrong if the underlying polls they include are wrong. The following numbers from the 2020 race were compiled in a new article from the liberal Brookings Institution and apply to two of the averages, RealClearPolitics and FiveThirtyEight.
more
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/daily-memo/3144929/key-state-polls-another-mess-in-the-making/
