If polls are any indication – and there are many questions about them – Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump is in better shape today than he was in 2020 or during his successful White House campaign in 2016.
Yes, Trump is trailing Democratic presidential challenger Kamala Harris in most surveys. However, the most crucial caveat is that he is trailing the incumbent vice president by lesser margins than he was in his first two general elections, both of which saw him perform better with real voters than pollsters.
Republicans are undoubtedly depending on what some pollsters refer to as the “hidden Trump vote,” though pollsters also acknowledge that group’s existence is uncertain. During a rally in Reading, Pennsylvania on Wednesday, Trump claimed to have a survey showing him up 3 points in the Keystone State, “which probably means 10.”
The Trump campaign, which lost the popular vote to Democrat Hillary Clinton by slightly more than 2 percentage points in 2016 but won enough states to win the Electoral College, also believes that the closer national polls are in 2024, the better his chances of winning more electoral votes.
The pollsters claimed it wasn’t a given.
During this campaign, pollsters adjusted their procedures, in part to account for “hidden” Trump voters, such as those who intend to vote for him but do not want to say so publicly, or other supporters who are difficult to find using standard polling methods such as phone calls. Furthermore, several groups of voters are displaying signals of greater participation in the election as a result of new problems ranging from anti-abortion legislation to growing living costs.
“There are fundamentals in question that no one can answer until Election Day,” pollster Frank Luntz declared.
Also, national polls are less important than specific state surveys, and they are nearly tied. In the seven crucial battleground states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Georgia, Arizona, Nevada, and North Carolina, the majority of polls fall within the margin of error.
“The only thing you can say for sure is that the seven swing states are all really close,” said Republican pollster Whit Ayres. “They’re all effectively tied.”
As of Friday, the Real Clear Politics average of recent national polls gave Harris a 1.8% lead over Donald Trump.
At this moment four years ago, Democratic contender Joe Biden had a 10.3 percentage point lead over then-President Trump in the RCP national average; Biden won the popular and electoral votes by far smaller majorities. In 2016, Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton outperformed the RCP national average by 6%.
Both of these elections were substantially closer.
In 2016, Clinton won the popular vote over Trump by 48.2% to 46.1%. Trump, on the other hand, won the Electoral College by 304-227 (plus seven “faithless electors” who voted for other candidates).
Four years later, Biden won the popular vote by a larger margin than Trump, 51.3% to 46.9%. He also won the Electoral College, 306-232.
Simon Rosenberg, a Democratic strategist who studies statistics, stated that pollsters have fixed earlier technique problems. He also pointed out that Republican candidates for the United States House and Senate underperformed surveys in the 2022 midterm elections, as did Trump in this year’s Republican presidential primaries.
Harris and the Democrats are equally likely to have the secret vote this time around, he said.
“The election is really close,” Rosenberg stated. “Everything is within the margin of error…” However, because we have significant financial and operational advantages, we are still more likely to pull it off.”
Finally, no one knows if this election will be more like 2016, 2020, or something else different.
“I think it’s somewhere in between,” Luntz replied. “And that’s why it’s too close to call.”