Let’s discuss some new polls, pollster accuracy, polling bias, the economy, and a reader question on Nate Silver.
Silver Bulletin Comments on Three New Trump-Favorable Polls
🕒 Last update: 1:45 p.m., Sunday, October 20. The data continues to be pretty negative for Kamala Harris. There are now three recent high-quality national polls that show Donald Trump leading — a difficult circumstance for Harris, given Democrats’ Electoral College disadvantage — and her edge in our national polling average is down to 1.7 points. National polls don’t influence the model that much, and the race remains basically a toss-up, but it’s not hard to think of reasons that Trump could win.
1: Fox News Poll
Fox News reports Trump ahead of Harris by 2 points nationally
Former President Trump is ahead of Vice President Kamala Harris in the presidential contest 50%-48%, according to a new Fox News national survey. That’s a reversal from last month, when Harris had a narrow advantage.
Harris, however, is ahead by 6 points among voters from the seven key battleground states (within the margin of error for that subsample), and the candidates are tied at 49% each among voters in close counties (where the Biden-Trump 2020 margin was less than 10 points). Trump’s advantage comes from a larger share in counties he won by more than 10 points in 2020 (64%-35%) than Harris has in counties Biden won by more than 10 points (58%-39%).
That raises the question of whether the Democrat could win the Electoral College while losing the national popular vote. In 2000 and 2016, it was the GOP candidate who lost the popular vote but won the Electoral College.
That’s certainly an interesting, if not outright shocking set of polls that has Trump ahead nationally but trailing in battlegrounds. Seriously?!
2: AtlasIntel National Poll
📊 ATLAS POLL – U.S. PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS
đź”´ Trump: 50.7% (-0.2)
🔵 Harris: 47.6% (+0.3)
⚪ Others/Don’t know: 1.7% (-0.2)
3: TIPP Tracking Poll Day 7
In the third of three high-quality polls, TIPP Insights reports Trump Surges Past Harris, Seizing 2-Point Lead
Powerful Momentum Shift Reverses the Race
Former President Donald Trump overtakes Vice President Kamala Harris and now enjoys a two-point lead, 49% to 47%, in the TIPP tracking poll. The data from the seventh release of the 23-day TIPP tracking poll shows the underlying change in the momentum. Recognized by The Washington Post in 2020 as the most accurate national presidential poll, TIPP continues to bring you the latest insights on the race.
The WaPo report did not include an evaluation of AtlasIntel. People are still debating what went wrong in 2020.
Here’s a free link to the Washington Post 2020 Accuracy Report.
2020 Accuracy
Nate Silver commented on Pollster Accuracy on X on March 21, 2021.
Finally, here’s how the most prolific pollsters fared in the general election. The best-performing pollster was AtlasIntel! Second was Trafalgar!
Yeah, they incorrectly had Trump winning a few states, but they were close on the margins, and that’s the better metric.
Note: I no longer embed Tweets because X embeds are broken and randomly display on WordPress. This appears to be an X issue, not a WordPress issue.
Polling Error in 2020
Accuracy in 2020 Comments
The Hungarian Conservative notes: “The most accurate pollster nationally in the United States in the last two election cycles has been Atlas Intel. In 2020 the public opinion research firm overestimated Biden by 0.2 points. In 2022 they overestimated the GOP by 0.3 points in the generic Congressional ballot. Impressively, in both cycles, they got the final results within a few tenths of a point.“
AtlasIntel Comments: “AtlasIntel had the best performance across all pollsters of the 2020 US Presidential Election with an average error of 2.01p.p. Our final national-level poll showing Biden with a 4.7 p.p. advantage is likely to be the single most precise estimate of the US popular vote. AtlasIntel also conducted the most precise polls across all pollsters for the states of Michigan and North Carolina. In all states polled by AtlasIntel, results fell within the margin of error of our estimates. The AtlasIntel average error was not only lower than that of other pollsters, but also lower than that of polling averages and model-based polling aggregators.”
Reader Comments
Accuracy in 2020 does not imply accuracy in 2022 but it does explain why many of my readers distrust Nate Silver, then 538 and now the Silver Bulletin.
One reader asked “Why do you keep referring to Nate Silver?”
The key reason I refer to Silver is that he explains in detail what he is doing and why. Everyone is free to make their own adjustments and I do.
Silver has Trafalgar with a 2.7 percent Republican bias. What if Trafalgar is correct?
It makers sense to me to rate pollster bias and weight polls by sample size.
However there is certainly a question as to whether Silver has Pollster Bias all wrong.
Might I suggest accuracy is the best way to determine if a pollster is “biased”? After all Trafalgar was the second most accurate in 2020.
Pennsylvania Polls
AtlasIntel Influence
Note the influence Silver gave AtlasIntel. This makes sense to me. The reason, or at least one of them, is sample size.
One of my readers commented that Silver should not weight the polls but average them. I disagree. In general, the larger the sample, the more accurate the poll.
AtlasIntel had a huge sample size of 2,048 likely voters. The NYT/Siena poll only had 857 likely voters.
Morning Consult had 1,395 likely voters. Silver rates Morning Consult as having a Democrat bias of 1.2 percentage points. That means to Silver that Trump is ahead in Pennsylvania.
Returning to TIPP Insights
A growing sense of economic dissatisfaction looms large. The TIPP Tracking Poll shows that 53% of Americans feel worse off now compared to their situation pre-COVID. Democrats are the most optimistic, with 51% saying they’re better off, but 68% of Republicans report being worse off. Independents largely mirror the national mood, with 55% feeling the pain. This dissatisfaction is a headwind for Harris, which Trump could exploit.
Growing Economic Dissatisfaction
Does “growing economic dissatisfaction” sound familiar? It should. It has been my repeated theme since February, weighted to renters (young voters and blacks).
Nate Silver Seriously Lags
On October 12, I asked How Much of a Political Lagging Indicator is Nate Silver?
The answer, as you can see, is a lot.
Trump’s Polling Momentum Is Real
On October 18, I commented Trump’s Polling Momentum Is Real With Under Three Weeks to Go
Let’s discuss momentum. Nate Silver mostly dismisses it, but I don’t. And the election is in 17 days.
Silver had momentum totally wrong. Momentum was there, and obvious. He chose not to see it.
Why the Momentum Now?
For 67 percent of the nation (the asset holders and the home owners), the economy (the stock market) has been good to very good, offsetting inflation.
For the renters and struggling homeowners fed up with property insurance, food, and other inflation, the economy borders on miserable.
Who is that? Young voters, blacks, and those without a college education.
That is what I said in my post on momentum. The undecided voters are breaking as I suggested in February.
Renters (Young Voters and Blacks) Will Decide the Election
I made that comment in February.
I repeated that message in April with People Who Rent Will Decide the 2024 Presidential Election
I repeated the message a second time on June 19 in Why Angry Renters Will Decide the Election, Take II
Economists say wages are now rising faster than the CPI. That’s not true for those who rent or wish to buy a house.
Trump fell way behind after a disastrous debate with Harris. That momentum ended a month ago.
People are again asking “Am I better off than 4 years ago?”
If you own stocks or refinanced your house at 3.0 percent, you likely are better off. And that’s a big majority. But that’s not who will decide the election. And it is a big part of why Harris is struggling.
Trump, not Harris is the candidate of change.
The economy is not as good as economists claim. People are suffering, especially Black and young voters, and those traditional Democrat votes are breaking hard for Trump.
That is what the Fox News, TIPP Insights, and AtlasIntel polls all suggest. And it’s what I have been saying all year.
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