The campaign sprint to Election Day has begun, and as always, an inordinate amount of attention is on public polling. Those polls are telling us the real story of the campaign so far — but are we willing to listen?
Looking across the campaign over the last six months, beyond the wilder twists — including not just two vice presidential selections but also President Biden’s unprecedented withdrawal and two attempts on Donald Trump’s life — a clearer story emerges. The only significant changes in head-to-head presidential polling happened in quick succession: after Biden’s debate, and then after Harris replaced him as the nominee.
That’s it — all the rest is noise.
Beginning in the spring of this year, Trump held a small but steady lead in the polling averages, ranging from 1 to 2 points. None of the day-to-day drama budged that lead beyond that.
Biden’s debate performance created an immediate and sustained expansion in Trump’s lead, to nearly 4 points nationally. Importantly, key numbers on personal characteristics — including mental sharpness and capacity to make good economic decisions — swung in the former president’s favor. The assassination attempt and GOP convention may have solidified that change, but there is little evidence that it helped expand it.
Biden’s decision to leave the ticket, and Harris’s quick consolidation of support, had a massive effect in the opposite direction. Looking across polling averages, from Trump’s peak to Harris’s peak, collective events around the transition caused a net change of over 6 points.
What about Harris’s recent debate performance? The early returns show no clear surge.
Despite the media’s breathless coverage about “unprecedented” campaign events, polling tells a more boring story: This election looks a lot like two of the last three cycles.
In both 2012 and 2016, the election was very tight at this stage. In 2016, Hillary Clinton held just a 2-point lead two months out; Barack Obama held a 4-point lead at this point in 2012.
The 2012 race tightened after the first Obama-Romney debate, when Romney actually pulled ahead by about 1 point. But in the end, Obama won by 3 points, with 51 percent of the vote and 332 electoral votes.
In 2016, Clinton’s 2-point lead expanded after her final debate against Trump, but then shrank after James Comey announced the FBI was investigating the former secretary of State’s use of a private email server. Clinton took the popular vote by 2 points (with 48 percent of the vote), but received just 232 electoral votes in her loss.
What about the states? That’s the right question, because the winning candidate has to win 270 electoral votes by winning states, not the national vote. But when it comes to polling, the math is very complicated. Because of their dominance among rural voters, the GOP is better positioned to win without winning the national popular vote, as Democrats rack up “extra” votes in the urban areas of states like California and New York.
So what do the polls say about which states we should we look at? Here’s where the calculations are hardest. Polls vary in quality and frequency at the state level, making it difficult to truly assess the relative “winnability” of different states.
Moreover, there are at least a dozen realistic combinations of states (and parts of states in Nebraska and Maine) that can lead each side to victory — or to a 269-269 tie. One cycle’s pivotal states are often different from the previous one. In 2020, the pivotal states were Georgia and Arizona. In 2016, it was the “blue wall” of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. And in 2012, Obama took former Republican strongholds Florida, Ohio and Virginia.
What’s it going to be in 2024? Could it be the Blue Wall again? Or perhaps a combination of Georgia and Pennsylvania? The polls will point to any number of states, but just like in 2012 and 2016, the states that determine the election might be different from what we expected.
We are headed for the home stretch. So far, according to the polls, the ups and downs of the campaign are fewer than we want to imagine. Are we ready to listen?
Doug Usher, Ph.D., is partner at Forbes-Tate Partners and an adviser to the master’s program in political analytics at Columbia University School of Professional Studies. Greg Wawro, Ph.D., is director of the master’s program in political analytics at Columbia University School of Professional Studies.
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