Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump have been so close for so long that any change in the polling vibe has pundits and pollsters feeling trigger-happy.
On the Harris side, some have picked up on her movement on issues that Trump has dominated in the race, such as inflation and who is better suited to tame it. “Today we are winning the election,” Democratic organizer Simon Rosenberg said.
On the Trump side, many sense a polling turn in his favor, especially in the battleground states. “There has definitely been a vibe shift in Trump’s direction,” pollster Scott Rasmussen said.
Even in the middle, some sense that a Trump move is happening. Take media pundit Mark Halperin. “There are not an insignificant number of Republicans who say the race is effectively over,” he said, adding, “Trump is going to lock up the Sunbelt states, probably all four, but at least three. And then he’s going to win Pennsylvania, and that checkmates her. They may be wrong, but there’s a not insignificant number of them who are quite confident of that. And the data they’ve seen on the absentees and the early votes and the voter registration makes them more confident.”
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s former pollster Mark Penn said, “No question Mark Halperin analysis is sensible. Polls coming in show Harris peaked and interviews not helping. Swing states trending away from Harris.”
Democratic pollster John Zogby agreed. He said on his latest podcast, “Generally speaking, Trump is back in the lead. Well, a 1-point lead or a 2-point lead. The battleground states Trump is now dominant.”
But as a pollster who has gone too far out on a limb before, he has a message to those ready to call the race. “We pollsters need to get the word ‘predict’ out of our minds and vocabularies,” he told Secrets.
He’s even more blunt in his new book on polls. “We pollsters as a profession are guilty of pretending to be God,” he wrote in his newly-released Beyond the Horse Race: How to Read Polls and Why We Should.
“We are not God,” Zogby said.
He is now urging poll consumers to educate themselves about polling. For example, instead of looking at the daily or weekly ups and downs, look at trend lines to get a sense of movement. And pick a pollster to follow.
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“The best way to do it is by pollster, not mixing and matching multiple pollsters. In other words, if Pollster A has Trump leading by 2 points on Tuesday, then Pollster B has him up by 4 on Thursday, then don’t conclude he has jumped 2 points. Two different pollsters, two different moments, two different turnout models,” said Zogby, who is part of the Secrets team that pens the weekly White House Report Card.
“Let’s have realistic expectations for what the polls are telling us and what they can and cannot tell us. This race is at equilibrium right now and is likely to be for a while. Perhaps it will break big one way or the other down the road, but that simply has not happened yet. We will all be informed by the polls, but don’t expect any predictions,” added Zogby, a partner at John Zogby Strategies.