To be fair … Rosenberg does not reject “polling” out of hand as a singular entity.
The theory is that there won’t be as much ticket-splitting as may be assumed. In today’s column, Rosenberg recounts a conversation with U.S. Representative Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) who is currently running for one of Arizona’s U.S. Senate seats (my emphasis):
This continued underperformance by Republican Senate candidates is going to matter in these closing days. I spoke to Ruben Gallego on Tuesday and he said that if he wins by 7-8 points Harris will win Arizona. Folks on the ground in Nevada are very pleased with what they are seeing. There just won’t be that many ticket splitters at the end of the day in these places, and I think this ongoing Republican underperformance in the Senate and NC Gov is a 2024 dynamic that deserves far more attention. I still believe Mark Robinson’s epic implosion in NC makes it far more likely we win there.
The Bulwark commissioned a survey of Republican Nikki Haley primary voters to see where they stood as a cohort seven months after her March concession to Trump. Just one poll, of course – nevertheless, the findings:
If the election were held today, Donald Trump would win just 45 percent of those who backed Haley in the GOP primary while 36 percent said they’d back Harris, the new poll shows, according to the survey of 781 registered Republicans and independents …
Trump’s level of support from Haley voters in the poll represents a significant drop in support for Trump, who won those same voters against Joe Biden by 59-28 percent. That 22 percentage point change in preference (from plus 31 percent for Trump in 2020 to plus 9 percent in this survey) could represent a swing of millions of votes.
… [The survey] shows slippage for Trump among both Haley voters who identified as Republicans and those who identified as independents. Only 49 percent of Republican Haley voters plan to vote for Trump in 2024, compared to 64 percent who voted for him in 2020. Among independent Haley voters, only 38 percent said they were voting for Trump, compared with 48 percent who backed him in 2020.
I kinda agree, but there HAVE BEEN a lot of Dems pointing out his lies. How do you think this could’ve been done more effectively?
“Well, all politicians lie, and I like Trump, so it doesn’t matter.”
They point out his lies about stuff like the size of his crowd and who he’s been sleeping with.
To my awareness, saying that Trump was a member of “Defund the Police” is basically like pronouncing yourself a crazy person who lives in a (imaginary) alternate universe - even though it’s true.
Meidas Touch podcaster Fred Wellman:
So if you take out the Republican-alligned polls, how does that change the numbers?
Honestly don’t care. The polls have to prove themselves anew next month. Not taking current poll numbers as magic oracles foretelling Trump’s inevitable victory. Frankly … polling is just too easy to game, with no real repercussions for small, nonce polling outfits.
If you don’t care, why post that at all? You posted it as if it proves something. What does it prove? I’m honestly asking, not trying to be a dick. Are the Republican aligned polls actually skewing the polls or not? Cuz just showing the number of polls being conducted tells us nothing.
‘Zactly so. When the exercise has been done the partisan polls have not moved any needles on either 538 or the NYT aggregations because they are indeed downweighted that much.
The polls are not magic oracles. They are data of limited utility. But the aggregations are not “gamed”.
I do understand why people would like to believe these polls are “gamed”. It’s the reason I started this thread a year ago(?!). There HAD to be a reason other than so many of my fellow United Statesians where making this election so close. No way I live in a country where so many people want this racist, pig-ignorant, serial and self-professed sexual assaulting, greedy, selfish, liar to be president.
And yet here we are.
The problem with voters and elections is that we think it is about the candidates and the issues. (The Trump issue is all a straw man…). But it is not. The voter is filling out the ballot, and at that moment, it is about them. Very very few might think about the welfare of a bigger group. No, it is 90 plus percent about that voter. The information is collected and sort of stored as a combined gut feel. And then you pick one. It’s that simple.
How did they decide? They often do not know.
Polling is the same.
Voters get more familiar with a candidate far away in the presidential race. And now large groups hate both. They may be more willing to take a poll. Local politicians are just “that crook” etc.
“I don’t like Trump, but I just don’t trust Democrats. They are like lawyers. In fact most of them are lawyers. Kamala…”
People have strong feelings about presidential candidates. I have heard Trump talking hundreds of times. I remember things my governor said, but I don’t even remember what he sounds like.
Polling now focuses on all kinds of groups. Black males under 25 etc.
The battleground states are worth polling but it may be too unreliable. The polling does give a close race and that part is true.
Anyone else nervous about how well the Trump Media stock is doing? It dropped significantly after his poor performance during the debate. However, now it is up almost 100% within the past two weeks.
I am feeling pretty sure Trump is going to win at this point. I think the map will surprise us with how different it is. He could get PA, NV, GA and MI. Ugh.
To a large degree it follows the betting markets.
It was down because everyone fully expected a massive sell off as soon as Trump was able to sell his shares. When this did not happen the price went back up. The price was artificially low due to a faulty assumption, which granted was a perfectly good guess at the time, and it has now self corrected. It doesn’t tell you anything at all about the election.
Agreed.
Normal error for a final state level polling average is 3 or 4 percent. So, if the final Pennsylvania polling average is, like now, D+1, a comfortable win for either candidate is more likely than a real squeaker.
I am pro-poll, but no one knows who is likely to win. Just the way it is.
I meant that I didn’t care whether or not right-wing poll flooding skewed the poll averages. In the moment, my immediate instinct was that your question was missing the point altogether. Even though my reply to you was an immediate gut reaction … after a few days of thought, I still think my initial emotional take was the correct one. Rationale:
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A glut of right-wing polls has a visual effect on poll followers regularly checking out, among others, FiveThirtyEight and Silver Bulletin. Instead of (say) ten Pennsylvania polls with Trump leading in (maybe) one or two … you have (say) 20 polls with Trump leading or even in (say) 12 of them. The visual effect of the two cases as you scroll through online results is very different.
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The mere presence of a flood of right-wing polls is problematic as it allows various media to fairly report on “the polls” in a pro-Trump manner that would be noticeably strained with fewer pro-Trump results to cite. Additionally, when an esteemed polling outfit like NYT/Siena comes in with a pro-Trump result … instead of standing on an island having to defend apparent outlier results, they (or their defenders) can point to “all the other polls saying the same thing”.
…
All that said, I do want to do the math on at least Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and some other states just to see. Earlier in the thread, @DSeid and I were discussing essentially this same topic shortly after NYT/Siena dropped some pro-Trump state polls. NYT/Siena has enough weight among pollsters that if they go for one candidate, they pull the overall average in that candidate’s direction a good bit – so ~2 to 3 weeks ago, removing the right-wing polls mattered less to the overall average.
But if we fast forward two weeks or so? Late last week through yesterday, when liberal Substackers like Rosenberg, Jay Kuo, and Robert Hubbell were calling out the immediate right-wing zone flooding? And the pace of right-wing flooding has apparently increased some more, I believe, in recent weeks. Let’s see what we’re dealing with after putting pen to paper.