{"id":7501,"date":"2024-09-13T18:26:41","date_gmt":"2024-09-13T10:26:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tingchao.xyz\/?p=7501"},"modified":"2024-09-13T18:26:44","modified_gmt":"2024-09-13T10:26:44","slug":"the-memo-democrats-fear-trump-will-out-perform-polls-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tingchao.xyz\/?p=7501","title":{"rendered":"The Memo: Democrats fear Trump will out-perform polls again"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Democrats who are in high spirits over Vice President Harris\u2019s debate performance and buoyed by her rise in the polls have one doubt that nags at them above all others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s the knowledge that former President Trump has consistently outperformed his poll numbers in the past \u2014 and the fear that he might do so again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Given that many polls already have the battleground states balanced on a knife-edge, the idea of history repeating itself is a Democratic nightmare.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI think we still have to worry about a Trump surge,\u201d Celinda Lake, one of two leading pollsters for President Biden\u2019s 2020 campaign, told this column via email.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the central difficulties for any pollster is how to model turnout. In most cases, that involves an educated guess about how many people from which demographics will actually cast ballots.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s one reason for Lake\u2019s concern.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cTrump is winning men who have not voted\u201d previously, she stated. \u201cMost pollsters are adjusting. Our firm looks at two turnout estimates now. One the average and one looking at [a] Trump surge.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Harris doesn\u2019t have any leeway if such a surge took place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the polling averages maintained by The Hill and Decision Desk HQ (DDHQ), Harris leads nationally by 3.4 points, but the races are much closer in most of the key states.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the three \u2018Blue Wall\u2019 states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin \u2014 all of which are vital to Harris\u2019s hopes \u2014 she leads by 0.4 points, 0.8 points and 3.0 points respectively.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

DDHQ currently gives Harris a 54 percent chance of prevailing in November.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The organization\u2019s director of data science, Scott Tranter, warned Democrats against taking any confidence from that number.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In probability terms, a 54 percent chance of winning basically means that in an imaginary scenario where the election could be run 20 times, Harris would win 11 times and Trump 9 times.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIf you feel comfortable with a 54 percent chance then you probably have to understand probabilities a little better,\u201d Tranter said. \u201cThis is a coin flip. Nobody should be surprised if Kamala Harris wins or if Donald Trump wins, any more than you would be surprised if you flipped a coin and it came up tails.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As the public focuses on the tightness of this year\u2019s race, the specific ways in which the polls went awry in Trump\u2019s previous two White House runs bears emphasizing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Back in 2016, national polls measuring Trump\u2019s performance against Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton were not off by a massive amount.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The final RealClearPolitics (RCP) average before Election Day had Clinton besting Trump by 3.2 points. In the actual results, she beat him by 2.1 percent in the popular vote \u2014 while, of course, losing the Electoral College.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The result was such a shock partly because the polls missed so badly in the decisive states. Across the \u2018Blue Wall\u2019, pollsters measured Clinton\u2019s showing with startling accuracy but markedly underestimated Trump\u2019s vote share.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the worst case of all, Wisconsin, the final RCP average predicted Clinton\u2019s vote share within 0.3 percentage points of what she actually received.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But it underestimated Trump\u2019s by almost seven points. He edged Clinton out by winning 47.2 percent of the vote, way ahead of the 40.3 percent the final RCP average had projected.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the wake of the 2016 shocker, there were various explanations offered about why the polls might have underestimated Trump\u2019s support.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Suggestions included that the pollsters\u2019 models of turnout had been off, underestimating rural and exurban turnout for Trump; that Trump supporters, perhaps more distrustful than their Democratic counterparts of polls and the media, were more reluctant to respond to surveys; or that some respondents had simply lied, ultimately backing Trump in the privacy of the voting booth having declined to tell a pollster they were going to do so.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2016 outcome sparked a lot of introspection on the part of pollsters, but the industry\u2019s overall performance in the 2020 race wasn\u2019t much better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In fact, in 2020 the national polls were further off than in 2016. The final RCP average predicted a 7-point victory for Biden, though he prevailed in the real popular vote by 4.5 points.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another factor remained the same: pollsters were excellent at estimating the Democratic nominee\u2019s level of support but poor at predicting Trump\u2019s. The final RCP average came within one-fifth of a percentage point of Biden\u2019s actual vote. But it underestimated Trump\u2019s by almost three points.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the three \u2018Blue Wall\u2019 states, Wisconsin once again produced the biggest miss, with the final RCP average underestimating Trump\u2019s actual vote share by almost five points.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Misfires on that scale put the current polls in this year\u2019s race into stark perspective. As of Thursday evening, The Hill\/DDHQ polling averages of seven battleground states showed only one in which either Trump or Harris was leading by more than a single percentage point.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The state in question, where Harris is up three points, was Wisconsin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There have not been enough polls since Tuesday\u2019s debate to get a firm picture of whether the clash changed the race in any fundamental way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Harris was widely seen as the victor and, on Thursday, Trump asserted in a social media post that there would be no more debates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Also on Thursday, Trump pollsters Tony Fabrizio and Travis TUnies issued a memo \u2014 made public by the campaign \u2014 that asserted that its own polls showed a two-point bump for Trump after the debate while Harris\u2019s support had \u201cremained flat.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, a new Morning Consult poll, also taken after the debate and released Thursday, showed Harris with a five-point national lead \u2014 her largest edge in any poll so far from the organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Harris\u2019s campaign continues to insist she is the underdog \u2014 though there is a question mark over whether her aides sincerely believe this or are using the claim to keep the motivation of her supporters sky-high.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One thing is sure: the race is very close indeed \u2014 and Democratic anxieties are going to remain sharp all the way until the results come in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Memo is a reported column by Niall Stanage.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Democrats who are in high spirits over Vice President Harris\u2019s debate performance and buoyed by her rise in the polls have one doubt that nags at them above all others. It\u2019s the knowledge that former President Trump has consistently outperformed his poll numbers in the past \u2014 and the fear that he might do so […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":7502,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[2534,1955,1724],"class_list":["post-7501","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international","tag-harris","tag-points","tag-trump"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Memo: Democrats fear Trump will out-perform polls again - LISTEN WORLD<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/tingchao.xyz\/?p=7501\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Memo: Democrats fear Trump will out-perform polls again - LISTEN WORLD\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Democrats who are in high spirits over Vice President Harris\u2019s debate performance and buoyed by her rise in the polls have one doubt that nags at them above all others. 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