Clinton is reported to have a much better ground game than Trump, such as reported in this Daily Kos article.
If Clinton really does have a much stronger GOTV team in place, is that something that would be reflected in the current polls, or can we assume that Clinton will do a point or two better than the polls currently show due to her better ground game? I’m sure there is no definitive answer, since in recent elections the ground game has been roughly equal, but I’d like to know what you all think about how that might play out this time since they are not equal.
What polls primarily measure is how many people support each candidate. They try to address who’s going to actually get to the polls using likely voter models, but that’s mostly based on factors like self-assessment of voting likelihood, previous voting habits, and current knowledge. But whether someone actually will vote or not can change, and that’s what the ground game is designed to do. I suppose that in principle, a likely-voter model could also take the ground games into account, but that would have such a high chance of disastrously distorting the results that I can’t imagine any reputable pollster would risk it.