No. of Recommendations: 3
I like those numbers but I wouldn't put much stock in this one poll. The problem with polls, especially at this time, is the volatility that can come from major recent events. In quick succession we have had Trump assassination attempt, Republican convention, Biden drops out, Democratic convention, RFK Jr drops out.
Following the conventions there is traditionally an afterglow, worth a couple of points. Sometimes it sticks, sometimes it doesn’t. Complicating this further are the polling misses in 2016 and 2020, even though the pollsters tried (very hard) to figure out what went wrong in 2016 and adjust their models to compensate. Still were off by a factor: Biden led by 7 or 8 points, but only won by 2 (talking popular vote here, electoral college math gets too wonky).
So they’re trying again, trying to figure out what’s happened. There was a piece in the Times or WaPo a week or two back, but I can’t find it, so this will have to do. What they’ve adjusted:
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/05/04/why-election-polls...(It’s a preBiden dropout story, but the mechanics are the same)
If anything I would guess they have gone to overweighting the Republican vote, since the polls came up short in both prior elections, which tells me that the polls should be either 1) close to accurate or 2) overweighted in favor of Republicans.
That there are some people who won’t admit voting for Trump is not surprising; after the fact pollsters found that almost no one voted for Nixon ;) And Trump says such despicable things, some people (not MAGAs, of course) realize that supporting the rapist criminal isn’t a good look, so the don’t respond affirmatively.
Finally, I’ll just say that the “rolling average” polls that have become popular in some media might not be showing the true story either, given the events that have happened most recently. They’re still adding in “old” numbers, trying to make the base of the polls larger (for stability) but in a fast moving environment that makes the numbers slower to respond than a flash poll.
