I am sick of the “Oh noz…. the polling says that Kamala is going to lose!” Chicken Little bullshit I am hearing from a small but vocal group of Democrats.
Here is my way of looking at things from what I hope is a logical perspective.
If you and I randomly walk down the street in an average area and ask 100 people who they are going to vote for, we will get a number for each canidate. If we do that same thing again the next day in a different area, we will also get a number for each canidate. If we keep doing this for a week, I have 7 days of results.
Logically speaking, our numbers for each day are going to be different. Some days Kamala might get 56 people saying they are going to vote for her, other days Kamala might get 51 people saying they are going to vote for her.
That’s how statistics work.
And this is how all the other races are shaking out. Some polls have this Senate candidate up by +5 and other polls have the same canidate down by -1. Some polls show a House seat is a toss up and others have one canidate or the other up by +6.
Again, that’s how statistics work.
But, this is NOT what we see with the presidential race. Throwing out garbage polling being produced to diminish Democratic enthusiasm, all the main “reliable” polling firms are showing very similar, if not the exact same, numbers over and over again: Kamala +4 nationally and +1 in swing states. Every one of them, and it's been like this for weeks.
None of that even accounts for the fact that Kamala’s likeability numbers are dramatically better than Trump’s, and her small-dollar fundraising is blowing him out of the water. These two items usually correlate with polling, but somehow, that’s not true this cycle. Kamala’s fundraising is historic and her likability is very high (for modern candidates anyway) but she is tied with a canidate who is struggling with fundraising and is largely disliked by the electorate? That’s not normal.
Now stop for a second and ask yourself two questions. HOW is the above possible and WHY.
How?
It’s not possible to have that level of consistency across multiple polling firms and multiple weeks, especially when down-ballot candidates are seeing larger polling fluctuations unless the polling firms are adjusting their results. It’s not statistically possible that every polling firm is seeing the same results, so some other factor has to be weighing on the numbers, and the only other factor is the methodology being used by the polling firms.
WHY?
This is just human nature. The polling firms know they missed in 2016 because Trump did better than expected (note, I will point out that the polling wasn’t that far off in 2016, it was just that it didn't have much time to catch up after Comey’s “butter-emails” press conferences but I digress). Their miss was larger in 2020 because Trump did much better than expected, but it’s often overlooked because Biden won.
The polling firms make money by doing what? By polling the population on key issues, including the presidential race. They make money by being accurate; getting eggs on their faces over and over again diminishes their reputation and, by extension, lowers their value proposition in the market.
So let’s say you are a polling firm and you know 2016 and 2020 has shaken the confidence of your customers, what do you do? You would try to hedge your polling so you don’t end up with egg on your face a 3rd time.
How do you avoid looking bad in the future to your existing and potential customers?
Well, one way to do that is to look at what the other polling firms are saying about the race, and then you “adjust” your numbers to make your results align with everyone else’s in the industry.
Stop and think about the above for a second. If you own a polling firm and you get it right then you look as good as everyone else and you win new clients by being easier to work with or by providing better pricing etc. But if you get it wrong in that scenario, you can point to the rest of your competitors in the industry all with the exact same miss, and you can still compete on accessibility or pricing.
In short by herding your numbers with the rest of the polling firms you can’t lose. You don’t have as much upside because you can’t stand out from the pack by saying “we were the only firm who got the election right” but that’s too much of a gamble for American business owners. They play it much safer than that and the downside of being a wrong outlier is much scarier than the upside of being an outlier who got it right.
So what’s the story here?
I admit, I don’t have first-hand knowledge that this is what is happening, but it’s the only explanation I can see for such static numbers across firms. This just doesn’t line up with statistical probability. Because we are not seeing big differences in polling for the top of the ticket, but we are seeing more fluctuation in down-ballot races, it sure seems that even the “trusted” polling firms are looking at everyone else’s poll numbers to come up with a result for the presidential race.
THEN... then you have to factor in that garbage polling is a factor in every cycle, and there are a lot of right-leaning polls that are currently and actively trying to de-motivate Democrats. When we couple this with the “quality polling” coming out of the firms skewing results in Trump’s favor because they are worried about their place in the market, that leads to a bunch of Democrats freaking out.
PLEASE STOP BUYING INTO THE FUD!
If you MUST pay attention to polling I would say this. By all available evidence, it seems like the polling firms are doing everything they can to correct toward Trump after 2 misses in a row, and Kamala is still leading. If the polling IS accurate, she is slightly ahead, if the polling is off because the polling firms are hedging their bets in favor of Trump, this could be a blowout for Kamala.
However, I still contend the absolute best thing you can do at this point in the race is to ignore the polling, tune out the noise, and keep working. Knock on doors, phone bank, send postcards, talk to your friends and neighbors, and do something positive instead of posting doom and gloom about the polling that we all know feels off.
Kamala has got this. She is running the best campaign I have ever witnessed in almost 60 years on this planet. She is an EXCELLENT canidate and I am confident she is going to win. Let’s not get distracted and let’s get to work people!
