Ezra Klein says to ignore the polls and as you know I feel the same — if only I could. Having said that, it you are refreshing on 538 several times a day anyway, this can help you keep perspective:
Back in 2016, Harry Enten, then at FiveThirtyEight, calculated the final polling error in every presidential election between 1968 and 2012. On average, the polls missed by two percentage points. In 2016, an American Association for Public Opinion Research postmortem found that the average error of the national polls was 2.2 points, but the polls of individual states were off by 5.1 points. In 2020, the national polls were off by 4.5 points and the state-level polls missed, again, by 5.1 points.
You could imagine a world in which these errors are random and cancel one another out. Perhaps Donald Trump’s support is undercounted by three points in Michigan but overcounted by three points in Wisconsin. But errors often systematically favor one candidate or the other. In both 2016 and 2020, for instance, state-level polls tended to undercount Trump supporters. The polls overestimated Hillary Clinton’s margin by three points in 2016 and Joe Biden’s margin by 4.3 points in 2020.
In a blowout election, an error of a few points in one direction or another is meaningless. In the California Senate race, for example, Adam Schiff, a Democrat, is leading Steve Garvey, a Republican, by between 17 and 33 points, depending on the poll. Even a polling error of 10 points wouldn’t matter to the outcome of the race.
But that’s not where the presidential election sits. As of Oct. 10, The New York Times’s polling average had Kamala Harris leading Trump by three points nationally. That’s tight, but the seven swing states are tighter: Neither candidate is leading by more than two points in any of them.
Imagine the polls perform better in 2024 than they did in either 2016 or 2020: They’re off, remarkably, by merely two points in the swing states. Huzzah! That would be consistent with Harris winning every swing state. It would also be consistent with Trump winning every swing state. This is not some outlandish scenario. According to Nate Silver’s election model, the most likely electoral outcome “is Harris sweeping all seven swing states. And the next most likely is Trump sweeping all seven.”
Which is all to say: The polls can’t tell you the way in which they’re going to be wrong, nor by how much. But that’s what matters now.
This morning there were a slew of polls showing the race is tightening, some of them straining credulity. I decided to just ignore them all. I’m also finding that my tolerance for Democratic bed wetting is very thin right now, with everyone and their their grandmother having sage advice for Harris and the Democrats. It’s enervating and counterproductive to have this discussion in public especially since Trump is deploying the Bandwagon Effect and strutting around like he’s 10 points ahead. It’s just not helpful
We’re all still suffering from the horrific 2016 result and stressed out about a possible repeat. We can’t believe that orange monster is even close. I don’t know about you but I’m stressed out beyond belief knowing that so many of my fellow Americans are enthusiastic about putting this freak back in the White House and some, to be generous, just think it doesn’t matter that he’s a fascist because they just want their tax cuts, don’t want a woman in the White House or simply hate Democrats/ desire power so much that they are willing to overlook it. I don’t know how I can unsee that, regardless of the outcome of the election.
But that’s a problem for another day.
If you’re a political junkie there are lots of stories and plenty of information out there to keep you interested. The horserace stuff just isn’t one of them. It’s close. That’s all we need to know.