How useful are early summer polls? About as useful as a groundhog with the weather.

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NPR Illinois | By A.J. Simmons
Published June 5, 2024

I've previously delved into reading the early tea leaves about the November 2024 U.S. election, but I left out one crucial area: polling. I did so because March was way too early to be trying to make predictions based on polling. Even though we’re now a few months down the line, I hate to break it to you, and a lot of folks, but it’s still too early to be paying attention to polling! For your own sanity, I recommend you stop paying attention to polls until after Labor Day once Election Season (the nerdiest of all the sports seasons), and particularly the post-season kicks off. To put it in sports terms, traditionally the end of the major party conventions is Opening Day, post-season starts after Labor Day, and the championship round start in October. You don't have to take my word for it. Let’s look at polling data since 1980.

In six of the past 11 elections, early summer polling either got the ultimate winner “wrong”, though I’m not a huge fan of that language as opinion likely genuinely shifted, or showed a tie. Basically, early polling is about as accurate as a weather forecast from a groundhog when it comes to reflecting the winner. By September, this number drops to four out of 11. Once we reach October, only three out of 11 polls either got the winner “wrong” or showed a tie. In the two ties, the eventual winner caught up to the early “leader” by October. Further the two late polling ties proceeded election results with the popular vote and electoral college splitting, suggesting close elections make for difficult polling (and polls that have results within the margin of error are not “wrong”). Basically, polls in October do a better job of reflecting the eventual winner, but are not perfect as polls are not forecasts.



So, why might polling be less useful now than in four months? For starters, depending on the poll, about 10% to 20% of voters are still undecided. That's a significant portion of the electorate still deciding! Especially considering this election will likely come down to a few percentage points in a handful of states. I’d like to see more polling firms ask follow-up questions to undecided voters about which direction they’re leaning, especially as the election approaches. It may be that undecided voters strongly overlap with those who dislike both Presidents Biden and Trump. The critical question then becomes who they dislike more. As I’ve written about elsewhere, strength of dislike is a powerful motivator of vote choice these days considering voters dislike just about everything and everyone.

...remember that polls are not elections, and we're still five months out. A lot can change in that time. There is still time for an “October Surprise” (along with a June, July, August, September, and early November one). Considering the impact of major events on recent presidential elections, including the late October 2016 announcement from the FBI regarding Secretary Clinton’s emails and the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, a lot can happen between now and November that may mean polling now does not match the result later this year.

In summary, using current polling to predict the election is like predicting a sports championship before the season starts. We’re still in the pre-season of the November 2024 election, so no matter who is “up” in the polls no one is “losing” or “winning”, no matter what your favorite cable news talking head is saying. Regardless of which campaign you support, don’t overreact to current polls. 2024 is most likely going to be a close one and surveys are allowed to have margins of errors, with several key states likely to have results reasonably within those margins of errors (which will probably be ignored by some prominently loud voices post-election). Plus, keep in mind that the further we are from the election, the higher the uncertainty in polling results. Otherwise, we’d be teaching about the Ross Perot administration in high school history. I must have missed that day.

https://www.nprillinois.org/community-voices/2024-06-05/how-useful-are-early-summer-polls-about-as-useful-as-a-groundhog-with-the-weather

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1. The title is entirely unsupported by the article

July polls may not be proof that a given candidate is going to win… but that isn’t at all the same thing as polls not being useful.

The leader on lap 150 of the Indy 500 does not always win the race… but that doesn’t mean that knowing who is leading at that point isn’t useful

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2. sez you

...I dissent.

Don't fealty to snapshop polling before we even have a convention.

It's indefensible, and just enabling propaganda from the very news orgs who are right now working to depress Democratic votes right now in their reports and broadcasts.

Presidential elections are a binary choice between the republican and Democratic nominee; this time, a convicted felon/adjudicated rapist and the Democratic incumbent nominee.

THOSE are the fundamentals in this race and they are unchanged by all of this fantasy polling.

[FBaggins]

3. Sez me...

… me and all of campaign experts who spend millions upon millions of dollars every cycle in gathering and evaluating that data.

The story is always the same… just the actors change. The team that is ahead says “polls don’t matter… don’t get complacent… we need to turn out!” - and the team that is behind says “polls don’t matter - they’re biased/wrong/whatever - we need to turn out!”

Yet those polls are incredibly useful to them.

The sad thing on this topic is that you don’t really need to look at the polls. You can just watch which sides’ advocates are making each of those arguments… and you can tell what the polls say

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5. president himself said the polls were wrong

...doesn't buy them.

So, sez President Biden:

PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: You guys keep saying that. George, do you-- look, you know polling better than anybody. Do you think polling data as accurate as it used to be?

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: I don't think so, but I think when you look at all the polling data right now, it shows that he's certainly ahead in the popular vote, probably even more ahead in the battleground states. And one of the other key factors there is, it shows that in many of the battleground states, the Democrats who are running for Senate and the House are doing better than you are.

PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: That's not unusual in some states. I carried an awful lotta Democrats last time I ran in 2020. Look, I remember them tellin' me the same thing in 2020. "I can't win. The polls show I can't win." Remember 2024-- 2020, the red wave was coming.

Before the vote, I said, "That's not gonna happen. We're gonna win." We did better in an off-year than almost any incumbent President ever has done. They said in 2023, (STATIC) all the tough (UNINTEL) we're not gonna win. I went into all those areas and all those-- all those districts, and we won.

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: All that is true, but 2020 was a close race. And your approval rating has dropped significantly since then. I think the last poll I saw was at about 36%.

PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: Woah, woah, woah

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: The number of Americans who think you're too old to serve has doubled since 2020. Wouldn't a clear-eyed political calculus tell you that it's gonna be much tougher to win in 2024?.

PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: Not when you're running against a pathological liar. Not when he hadn't been challenged in a way that he's about to be challenged. Not when people--

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: You've had months to challenge him.

PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: Oh, sure, I had months, but I was also doin' a hell of a lot of other things, like wars around the world, like keeping NATO together, like working-- anyway. But look.

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: Do you really believe you're not behind right now?

PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: I think it's in-- all the pollsters I talk to tell me it's a tossup. It's a tossup. And when I'm behind, there's only one poll I'm really far behind, CBS Poll and NBC, I mean, excuse me. And-- uh--

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: New York-- New York Times and NBC both have-- have you about six points behind in the popular vote.

PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: That's exactly right. New York Times had me behind before, anything having to do with this race-- had me hind-- behind ten points. Ten points they had me behind. Nothing's changed substantially since the debate in the New York Times poll.

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: Just when you look at the reality, though, Mr. President, I mean, you won the popular vote-- in-- in 2020, but it was still deadly close in the electoral college--

PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: By 7 million votes.

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: Yes. But you're behind now in the popular vote.

PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: I don't-- I don't buy that.

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: Is it worth the risk?

PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: I don't think anybody's more qualified to be President or win this race than me.

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: You know, the heart of your case against Donald Trump is that he's only out for himself, putting his personal interests ahead of the national interest. How do you respond to critics who say that by staying in the race, you're doing the same thing?

PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: Oh, come on. Well, I don't think those critics know what they're talkin' about.

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: They're just wrong?

PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: They're just wrong. Look, Trump is a pathological liar. Trump is-- he is-- you ever seen anything Trump did that benefited sa-- somebody else and not him? You can't answer, I know.

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6. As I said...

So you can tell which end of the poll debate stick we’re on.

He didn’t have any problem with the same polls four years ago… because we were almost a dozen points better off. It was Trump’s team making the “polls don’t matter!” spin.

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7. fuck this arguing with the president

...who do you think is listening to this?

You're bending over backward to make as if early summer polling has never faced a scandal. It's just not believable to those of us who've lived through dozens of these summer polls.

The NPR article rigs more true than making so much out of this month's kerfuffle. Biden can overcome a false narrative about his abilities, but Trump can't overcome his felony charges.

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4. Per COOK POLITICAL, polling for the year has been where'd you expect it to be.

A close race. Just what the Biden Campaign Manager has said it would be.

The last few weeks suggests that 1) Trump remains at what is essentially his ceiling, but Biden has lost some of his support post-Debate.

[WarGamer]

8. In other words...

Since 1980, the candidate DOWN in June polling only won the general election FOUR TIMES.

Reagan, Papa Bush, Clinton and Trump.