“If polling firms were still applying the same techniques they did in 2016 and 2020, we’d probably be seeing a Harris lead in the Electoral College right now. Instead we have a toss-up, more or less”
Why haven’t any outfits released a “here’s what our data would look like given our 2020/2016” approach? Would be very informative to this discussion, but maybe it would highlight the large amount of subjective modeling work at play in a way that pollsters would prefer not to talk about.
I suspect that some of the difference is the methods they are using to get in touch with voters and get them to respond to the poll. This is going to be harder to “undo” than just changing the likely voter model.
In any case, I’m not sure why the modeling is said to be “subjective” here.
That analogy doesn’t work, as other commenters have pointed out. A lot of decisions go into constructing a model, as Nate has made abundantly clear in many many posts. Not only what to include, but in the choice of parameters. Not even remotely like a ruler. And when it comes to pollsters, just look at the whole “likely voter” issue.
Of course, that doesn’t make model construction *purely* subjective. Arguably it’s more objective than subjective. But it was obvious to me what Casey meant. I disagree only with the claim that “pollsters prefer not to talk about” it. I’ve read more articles on these issues in the last few weeks than I can count.
You misunderstand the analogy. The instrument choice is the model choice. There are actually choices to be made about the instrument to use.
We don’t refer to this as “subjective measuring” because, again, that would remove meaning from the word subjective. Further it would imply existence of “objective modeling”, and of course by this standard that’s just not a thing. Even if someone else built the model you’re still choosing to apply it.
I think I understood the analogy just fine. It’s a bad analogy because basically the only relevant variables with measuring lengths is the desired degree of precision, and the range of lengths. Yardsticks made of wood, metal, or plastic will give the same results. That’s far from being the case with these kinds of models.
I think you misunderstood what Casey meant by “subjective”. You’ve constructed a strawman definition. He didn’t say “subjective measuring”, he said “subjective modeling”. If your beef is that he should have said “modeling using models in whose construction subjective choices were made”, okay, fine…
** Actually even laboratory ruler use is slightly subjective as you record a digit more precise than smallest gradient.
Using “subjective” like you are makes everything subjective, word loses meaning. I look forward to ignoring your philosophy 101 essay assignment defense of this
There's a lot of subjectivity in polling. It's not an exact science. Previous methods of reaching prospective voters don't work any longer. Response or non-response biases. Shifting party identification. Overweighting certain sub-groups. Case in point this year most polls still use D+3 to D+7 weighted models, when Gallup shows it is R+3. If this is true, those polls will miss outside the margin of error.
Cool, so let's bet, you and me. I've already put my money where my mouth is by placing multiple bets on Kalshi. But I find your side never has the strength of their conviction to put money on the line.
Simple bet. I bet that all the big polls will again miss election results outside the margin of error (2.5%).
Agreed that it’s likely impossible to truly reconstruct data using past models, but you could certainly experiment to get a bit closer and understand the impact of the change.
For example, some outfits have chosen to include “drop offs” this year; folks who confirm they’re voting for a candidate but hang up before the end of the call. This was theorized as one of the reasons for undercounting Trump-specific support in past elections.
Well, now firms have some actual data; was the theory true? What do the results look like if you include/don’t include drop offs?
One thing I don’t understand is how they actually include drop-offs in the results. Like, if the only information they have about them is who they’re voting for and where they live (and maybe they’re voter registration data in states that make that available), how do they know how to weight those respondents when they do demographic adjustments? I guess they could use the demographic % breakdowns for D/R voters in the area they live as a placeholder, but even has potential for skewing things if Trump/Harris dropoffs in that area tend to have different demographics than those candidates’ voter in general. And if their LV screens are in anyway based on questions in the survey, how do they treat drop-offs on that front if they didn’t answer all the questions?
Other Nate goes into this in the second of the NYT articles linked here (the first is a very interesting summary of the main theories for why that polling error existed in 2020/2016). The most wide-spread method for adjustment, according to him, is "weighing by recalled vote". I only kinda understand the methodology as he describes it, but it boils down to getting info on who respondents voted for in the previous presidential election, then adjusting how those voters are accounted for by demographic. Most polls are using some form of this method
In practice, this means that polls are being adjusted to the results of the previous election (2020, midterms aren't a factor). Cohn goes into the potential pros and cons of using this strategy (Pro: it would account for another pervasive polling error in Trump's favor, Con: it would have made polling results LESS accurate in every 21st century presidential election).
I'd really recommend that article, it's super interesting. There's no "remove recalled vote weighting" button, but Cohn does compare their model to a version of their state averages that only include polls without recalled vote weighting. It aligns a lot closer to 2022 than to 2020: Harris increases her leads in the midwestern swing states, Trump increases his in Arizona and Georgia, while Nevada and North Carolina are basically the same. That results in a slightly lower popular vote advantage for Harris, but a relatively significant electoral college lead
(It's important to note that this article is from 2 weeks ago. The Silver Bulletin model leaned 54% Harris at that point)
I saw that article, and it’s part of why I’ve increasingly wanted more data from some of the polling outfits.
Cohn didn’t do a great job explaining the mechanism, though. Basically, it’s a selection issue: there’s an increased likelihood that political moderates who actually voted for Trump will instead remember themselves voting for Biden. Given their past lean, these folks are also likely to vote for Trump again, giving pollsters the mistaken impression that a Biden 2020 voter is now a Trump 2024 voter. Add that up across the electorate, and you get a tendency to overstate the chances for the loser of the last election.
Appreciate that clarification. He does a much better job explaining it in their most recent newsletter, the older article would've benefitted a lot from a simplified explanation. I do wish individual pollsters in general, especially the really big-shot ones, were more open in showing how different adjustments and weighting affected their results.
I really appreciate that Nate does it here, but that's after aggregating all of those other polls. There's no possibility to see how decisions on the more subjective aspects of polling have changed that final number. More importantly, we're not seeing WHY those decisions are being made in the first place. Other Nate's articles were fantastic not just because they get a bit into how adjustments to methodology have affected the polls, but also they describe pollsters' reasoning for making those adjustments in the first place (which seem relatively sound imo)
The only question I have about this is that, could that bias impacted by the fact that (for the first time since 1956) the loser of the last election is literally on the ballot. Anybody who actually did vote for Biden and now is voting for Trump may see telling the pollster that as admitting a mistake, could they possibly then lie and say they voted for Trump before? And could the same effect mean that there are less people who voted for Trump last time who say they voted for Biden? Or if some people aren’t being intentionally misleading and instead just misremember due to a bias toward the winner (I don’t know how somebody could forget who they voted for in any race, much less a recent one) could the presence of the same candidate again jog their memory so they recall correctly?
Great thread. Thanks for the clarity. Well done. Also agree with comment about how aggregation hides the details, including important ones. I’m more convinced than ever that polling error will likely favor Harris. But I also recognize that I might me confusing my wishes with reality.
Outside the few true scam artists, for those that have even a modicum of professional self esteem, you should count yourself lucky if you can get them to STFU about it. 🤣
Sorry, but that’s not the same thing; that’s just applying the “error” from each state to current results. Instead, I’d like to see the results if pollsters ran their current data through their older models.
That headline is from The Telegraph, which isn't exactly the most reputable news source. Also, FWIW, they recently changed the headline to say "analyst" instead of "pollster", so I suspect several people told them.
Nate knows this happens. He joked about it in another post. He can't be responsible for how media writes headlines. It is funny, though. Nice post, detailing that.
FWIW (nothing, as Nate persuasively argues), my gut is Kamala, because every single data point I have *other* than the polls says its absolutely insane that Trump could win. I realize that this is part of being in the "bubble" of people who are aware of things like how Trump Chief of Staff John Kelly reported that Trump wished he could have "Hitler's generals" but was unfamiliar with who Rommel was.
"every single data point I have *other* than the polls says its absolutely insane that Trump could win"
Another data point: Democratic Senate candidates in PA, MI, WI are **currently** running campaign ads touting how they voted for some Trump bills when they were in Congress. Why would savvy, experienced Democratic politicians start advertising to their voters that they sided with Trump? Costs a lot of campaign funds to run those ads.
I mean, they are responding to the polls, so it's really the same data point.
I meant more things like:
1) enthusiasm I see around town (lots of yards in my neighborhood with signs for the R congressional candidate but conspicuously no Trump sign - which is different than 2016 or 2020)
2) social media enthusiasm levels (although this may in part reflect some self-segregating, as conservatives have adopted Twitter as their platform of choice and liberals have fled it -- but there is still a sizeable conservative faction on Reddit, and I'm just seeing a lot less pro-Trump stuff than I did in 2016 or 2020)
3) Trump's promises v. Trump's record -- it's one thing to believe the guy's rhetoric about helping the little guy in 2016 (which is why I very much thought he could win back then), but it's another thing entirely after he governed like a typical Republican, with a booster shot of chaos and insanity. But again, I recognize that I'm probably in a bubble that is aware of what Trump actually did instead of just having vague nostalgic vibes about the pre-covid times.
What about early voting? The data I've seen looks good for Harris in PA, MI, and WI and more mixed in the other swing states.
But it's hard to take that seriously because there's no point of comparison. There's no Covid to drive a ton of mail in voting like 2020, but both sides are encouraging their voters to vote early (unlike 2016).
Party Identification is R+3 for the first time in a long time. If polls use D+3 to +7, they will miss bigly.
The trend is towards Trump in all polls and betting markets.
Republicans made massive gains in voter registration in key swing states, thanks in part to grassroots orgs like Turning Point, Scott Pressler, Chase PA, 100X, etc.
Early data coming out shows massive turnout in red counties, and those with propensity data show it is 0/4 or 1/4 Rs coming out, so they are not cannibalizing ED votes.
Miami-Dade is R+10 in early voting right now, insane.
Nevada is R+ right now as Jon Ralston admits.
Articles coming out daily on the panic setting in amongst Dems.
There was a significantly larger number of relatively high profile Republicans who endorsed the Democrat this time around, so it's hard to say how many of those +R advantages are actually Harris votes.
Polls consistently show both Harris and Trump are getting 95% of each party's respective voters. There's not going to be a mythical large number of Rs voting for Harris. If so, it would be canceled out by the Ds voting for Trump (RFK, Gabbard supporters, etc.).
The sign thing is obviously anecdotal, but it’s hard not to notice. I’ve seen more Harris signs than I did Biden,l and Clinton—I saw almost no Clinton signs. I still see Trump signs, but not as many as 2020 or 2016. I saw a ton in 2016.
I wouldn't call the words immortal when she never said them. Here's the actual quote: "I live in a rather special world. I only know one person who voted for Nixon. Where they are I don’t know. They’re outside my ken. But sometimes when I’m in a theater I can feel them."
She was perfectly aware that she lived in a vacumn chamber, not oblivious to it like the false quote implies.
The "How did candidate X win, I don't know anyone who voted for him" is real. There were definitely people who said that on 1980 in Berkeley about Reagan.
And I've seen similar lines about Trump 2020 used as "proof" that the election was rigged.
Trump helping the little guy, as in median household income adjusted for inflation (up 12.4% for Black working class people, up 8% for white working class during Trump years. Up 0.8% for Blacks under Biden/Harris, down 1.5% for whites).
Sounds like the little guy did quite well under Trump and got whacked under Biden/Harris
"You and I both know that Trump's policies didn't have anything to do with that "
Restricting illegal immigration to 1/6 of its current numbers which reduces the supply of low-wage workers (ever heard of the law of supply and demand setting prices and wages?).
Replacing NAFTA with new trade pact that has specific targets for US content in manufactures imported from Mexico.
Imposing tariffs and technology restrictions on China to prevent US trade from enriching our most powerful adversary
Inflation at less than 2% for the duration of the term
I understand this may not feel intuitive, but most people who identify as conservative but who are still on the fence about Trump, hate him as a person but like a few of his policies.
The goal for senate / house Dems running in swing states is to pull the few palatable Trump policies they support, while drawing contrast to between them and the far right policies supported by Trump and the Republican running against them.
That would clearly show this ad approach by Kasey in PA as smart and not at all in conflict with Kamala having just as good a chance to win PA as Trump.
This is the problem with the popular stat driven side of politics and the sometimes misguided out of touch understanding of how normal people think and vote. Most voters are complicated and have contradictory view points. You can’t just do one-size fits all approach to reaching the persuadable voter.
Also, if Kasey was so afraid of tying himself with Harris, he wouldn’t have stumped for her numerous times in the last few months. This is the second or third time I’ve seen someone use this as evidence of Dems giving up or acknowledging Trump will win and that’s just not the case.
The polls have been showing downballot Democrats running ahead of Harris. It points to the existence of a good number of Trump/Downballot D voters (or Undecided/Downballot D, edit - or Trump/Undecided). These voters are definitely worth targeting for downballot Democrats. It doesn't point towards an overperformance for Trump because that data is taken directly from the polls as they are.
Fwiw I'm dubious about the size of that gap. It doesn't make a lot of sense to me. I expect either the downballot Democrats will underperform, or Harris will overperform. But it's pretty clear what the polls are saying.
"Why would savvy, experienced Democratic politicians start advertising to their voters that they sided with Trump?"
This is probably hopelessly naive. But one possible answer is, "because it's good for the country".
Partisanship in the US needs to go down. If we were to suppose that people high up in the Democratic party actually *do* care about democracy, then we should expect them to do that. People who are anti-Trump should recognise that America's problems don't all just suddenly go away in the event that he loses the election (and the loss sticks).
I’d be interested to see whether voters do switch parties. I believe I saw somewhere that switching parties between elections was quite a lot higher than I thought.
And because they don't understand that undermining the Harris campaign by advertising they supported Trump policies in Congress could have repercussions for them if Harris wins?
The media made a big deal out of it, but I kind of doubt that their ads are going to make anyone say, “Oh, wow, I was totally going to vote for Harris, but this one guy said he could be bi-partisan, so now I'm going to vote for Trump.”
Yeah, "absolutely insane that Trump could win" is not based on anything happening in the actual election. It just means, "I don't want it to happen! I don't want it! I don't want it!!!"
Serious question - Do you actually think an undecided swing voter 2 weeks before an election, who is likely apolitical by nature, knows or cares who John Kelly is? Or even cares about a Trump = Hitler comparison as if they haven’t heard it for the last 8 years?
Gotta remember that the people deciding this election are not political nerds paying for polling analysis from Nate Silver.
Thing is, anyone who this would have traction with is already in Harris' camp. The whole "Trump admires Hitler" thing has been reported/alleged before. The fact that CNN is hitting it so hard today I see as a sign of panic.
I didn’t say it definitely happened, but I’d pose the question to you of why everyone who worked with Trump has similar stories. Is the likelihood that all these senior military figures, who served our country for forty years with integrity, are all lying about Trump? All of his secretaries of defense, his chief of staff, his vice president, his attorneys general, his first Secretary of State. They’re all lying? Or Trump is? Sincerely what is more likely.
There are different kinds of swing voters. The moderate Republican pro-choice suburbanite, who has always voted Republican in the past, likely knows who John Kelly is. In any case, should anybody run into a report of that interview, they will be told who he is. But it is the former swing voter, who may even be a shy Harris voter, who would be affected by Kelly's comments.
I believe once there was a survey done of when Boris Johnson kept on saying: Get Brexit done. I think only 30% could recall it. The point being that most people don’t listen to politics and messages need to be really quick and easy to remember. I think Trump has done better here (not perfect) with the key points and why the stories and huge campaign slogans cut through. Unfortunately he needs to do them now.
As another person with a meaningless gut feeling that Kamala will pull it out, I tend to agree.
The other big reason my gut says Harris is that pollsters have much more incentive to avoid underestimating Trump than they do to avoid underestimating Harris, which surely affects them consciously and subconsciously.
My gut says Kamala too largely based on what you said in your last paragraph. Nate said in his last sentence that it’s probably equally likely for a pro-Trump miss and a pro-Harris miss. I think with the weighting by recalled vote being relatively abundant that it’s less likely Trump support is underestimated a third time. It’s either pretty accurate or we are underestimating Kamala’s strength IMO
Saying you want "Hitler's generals" is not an endorsement of Hitler himself. Those officers tried to kill him. Instead, it reflects the high regard for German military leadership in many post-WW2 studies. Similarly, studies have shown German soldiers were objectively more efficient than counterparts in other countries.
Although Kelly said that Trump revealed in the conversation that he didn't know that Hitler's generals tried to kill him, and Trump didn't know who Rommel was. Occam's Razor here: the dude likes Nazis.
What does 'efficient' mean? What studies are you talking about?
Everything I've ever read indicates that the American military was superior to the German military in basically every way except for the fact that the Germans overengineered their vehicles (but even this is really another reason the American military was superior, because America made vehicles that could be easily mass-produced).
Sure. Shame about their leadership (generals, Hitler himself) pointlessly over-stretching them and then needlessly trapping a bunch of them in Stalingrad.
I mean, there are data points within the polls that also point in her favor. For example, the younger a voter is, the less likely they are to say they plan to vote early. Yet, those young voters *did* show up in 2020, and they *did* show up in the Blue Wall battleground states in 2022.
The media loves to harp on the fact that young voters didn't show up as expected in 2022, but they never focus on individual states. Young voters vote when the issues are important to them *and* when they think their vote can make a difference.
Combine that with the fact that none of the Blue Wall states restricted voting (not for a lack of trying, Pennsylvania) since 2020, and I fully expect young voters to show up in force on or before election day.
All of that is a valid analysis based on data. It would be absurd to try to use it to predict that Harris will win. However, it's equally absurd to ignore data like that and claim that Trump will win just because polls have had a tiny change and Republican early voting numbers are up! (I'm not accusing Nate of doing that; I'm speaking generally.)
If that was your point, you would have said it right after talking about the big Trump sign. Or after your first comment about the farmer. But you didn’t.
It’s genuinely fascinating to watch the counflip nature of this election open an X-ray into everyone’s soul.
Nate, professional hater and liberal contrarian, is ranting about Kamala’s weak campaign. The betting markets, mostly a certain type of dude, are going further and further toward Trump. Anti Trump Republican Mike Murphy keeps waffling back and forth. I spend half my time in despair and half my time optimistic.
As someone who is basically completely divorced from the American political spectrum, it's becoming increasingly tempting to just move to Switzerland and bunker down for the next few decades.
Ah the "coin flip". I have been following Nate since 2008 and appreciate the scientific rigor. But my question is this. It seems no matter the analysis or commentary or what-if scenario ("take out RFK", "take out partisan polls"), you could replace the headline of every post to be "Race is a coin toss". If, in a polarized electorate, every election is going to be within a a few points, and if you're going to call any win probability between 40% and 60% a "coin toss" (seems reasonable to me) - then what is the point of all this polling and all this analysis?
For this content specifically, the point is entertainment value. Do you enjoy reading the thoughts of Nate Silver, who thinks about elections in a statistical way? And do you enjoy reading it enough to pay for it?
I sure do. And so do many others. And that's the only reason this exists.
The point of the polling at least, is that that's the only reason we *know* that it's a toss up. Elections aren't always close.
Imagine if voters had categorically rejected Harris after Biden dropped out - maybe she was tainted too much by association. It's easy to imagine that having happened, but the polls are reasons to think that that hasn't happened. It's easy to miss the importance of polls in this, because there's tonnes of vibes that will tell you Harris wasn't rejected. But a lot of those vibes are *informed* by the polls. Vibes tend to be given a lot more weight when they align with polls, and that's one of the few good things there is to say at them.
Yeah this ambivalence from blue collar union leaders seems more driven by an attempt to hedge bets than any political ties, and the teamsters in particular seem driven by internal politics. Many teamster bosses who voted in agreement with non endorsement then turned around and had their locals endorse. While they've thrown around a survey of members as justification, the panel of teamsters members that interviewed candidates chose harris.
Sean O'brien in particular seems to be trying to flirt with right wingers that actively despise union labor, in an effort that is likely to only lose political allies than gain any new ones.
Is it actually true that everything is between 40% and 60%? I went and double checked the 538 forecast for the 2020 election and the final prediction was an 89% chance of a Biden victory. https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2020-election-forecast/
The ultimate result was close, but that isn't the same thing as the election being a toss up.
Odds of a Trump victory are approaching 70% on betting markets. All the signs point to a Trump victory, but the Election Mafia is too scared to say so.
That's really the opposite of the important take: betting markets said there was a 25% chance that Brexit would happen in an environment where many high profile people were convinced it wouldn't happen, and then it did happen. 25% chance is a *lot*. David Cameron certainly didn't think it had a 25% chance of passing when when called the referendum.
This is similar to Nate at 538 giving Trump a 1 in 3 chance to win in 2016. While less than 50%, it was a lot higher than other people were saying, and a lot higher than the conventional wisdom. Judging these things is tricky because they aren't repeated, and it's easy to fool yourself that there isn't any real uncertainty, *someone* knows what's going to happen. But if you roll a d6 and one person says it's 60% going to come up 1, and another person says it's 17% going to come up 1, and then it comes up 1, who was actually correct?
Most bettors aren't different from the rest of us, but some of them are. The thing that's special about betting markets is that people who are smart get a direct financial incentive to tip the scales back in favour of the genuine best-knowledge probability.
There isn't always enough smart money to counter the stupid money, but at least the smart money has a mechanism to fight back. If the stupid money is distributed roughly proportionately to population, then for things that are decided by popular vote (or close to it), the smart money be able to compensate for any imbalance in that distribution.
Again, it's this issue that we can't do statistics on one-time events, or individuals. It's either yes or no: like the election. It's not a 25% chance, it's one person or the other.
It's like the joke "Economists have successfully predicted 9 of the last 5 recessions".
Eventually political realignment will happen, because change is the only certainty, but trying to predict when and what it will look like is pure speculation. We won't know until after it happens.
I can't understand why you think the election is close if you don't think polls are valid. There is no reason we can't wake up to a landslide for one candidate or the other: that's the usual way polls misfire in our polling history. The other way is that the pollsters say it will be a landslide for X but it turns out a landslide for Y.
This is the only presidential election where Silver's model has it in the 40-60 percent range, dating back to 2008. Even this year, it wasn't always in that range when it was Biden vs. Trump, and it might not end up in that range for Harris vs. Trump.
The point of the polling is to establish with rigor that the race is in fact, and remains, a close one. I’m not sure what you mean by asking about the point of the analysis. Why would a close race be less appropriate to analyze than a lopsided race? If anything, I think it would be more so.
I ask the question because *every* nationwide race for the foreseeable future will be close enough for win probabilities to be within 40 to 60% and therefore a "toss up". Or am I wrong about that?
You probably are right about that; I agree, anyway. I just don’t see why that should mean no one should talk about it. It seems interesting to discuss publicly why that is the case and why it remains the case.
Yes, I'd love to read some thoughtful discussion of why we seem stuck in a knife-edge 50/50 state for so long. I keep being afraid it's because we have turned into two nations, a bimodal distribution with essentially no actual "median voters". (But even if that's true, it doesn't answer the question of why it's 50/50.)
You're right of course, there is nothing at all wrong with discussing this stuff. I just sometimes wonder if the huge sums spent on conducting (and influencing and pundit-ing) polls, with near certainty that result will be "too close to call", might not be better spent on polls asking people what they want for the future.
Have to admit I look at the silly discrepancy between betting odds and expert forecasts, and just as in 2020 I start thinking of easy(ish) money via arbitrage. Worked like a charm four years ago.
100% agree that the usual kind of guy (almost certainly guy) who bets on elections is very likely the kind of guy who would wear a red baseball cap with white writing on it.
I read Carville’s piece and it just didn’t register with me. His first point really conveys nothing at all in relation to this current election cycle. His second point is just that Harris has more money, but I am highly skeptical of this because voter opinions about the economy and the border appear very entrenched and unlikely to move, regardless of how many Harris ads flood the airwaves. He admits his third point is just his feelings.
I’m much more amenable to the argument that Harris’s team has a much better ground and turnout game for their voters, though this is somewhat mitigated by the fact Harris would actually benefit from lower turnout overall.
If Harris' turnout operation is well run, they are mostly contacting likely supporters who are also low propensity voters. They would only be pushing higher turnout among their own supporters. First of all, this is why canvassing operations do multiple contacts: early contacts are to determine if a voter is a likely supporter. Second, this is why turnout operations that span multiple election cycles are stronger: you keep the data from the previous cycle and so start off knowing a lot about who is a likely supporter and not.
How many low propensity voters does Harris have, though? Everything I’ve read seems to indicate not very many compared to Trump. This leads me to believe her effective turnout game may not be enough to counteract Trump’s, even if his is substantially worse, because Trump simply has more low propensity voters to draw from.
Your math here is lacking, Harris doesn't need to turn out as many low-propensity voters as Trump. Her coalition is far less dependent on low-propensity voters and if her turnout operation gets 80% of 30% of her base and 100% of the 70% who are high propensity, she gets 94% of her coalition out. If Trump gets out 75% of his low-propensity voters who are 80% of his base and 100% of the 20% of his base who are high propensity voters, he gets 80% of his coalition out and Harris wins comfortably even though she's turning out far fewer (as an absolute number) of low-propensity voters than Trump is. These are obviously made up numbers, but the point holds that Trump's lagging ground operation when relying substantially on low-turnout groups could be fatal for him.
not really, you do see Harris up by like 6 points with voters who have voted in each of the last four elections which is where this would show up. Whether or not the campaigns get their marginal voters to the polls would be less reflected in likely voter numbers than in actual turnout differentials. Turning a "probably not voting" voter into an actual voter would not show up in polling but would show up in the final tally. Trump's excelled at that in 2020 but the ground differential was flipped.
I reply to both of your comments, both are possible. Harris almost certainly has a stronger traditional turnout operation. But nobody could say if some very popular podcasts can make up for that. And it does seem that Trump has more low propensity voters now. But Democratic leaning low propensity voters are now concentrated among young voters, and there are still a lot of them.
For example, Trump may turnout way more low propensity voters just by doing Andrew Schultz’s podcast and the reported Rogan appearance than anything Harris’s ground game can match.
The "having more money" argument is less about persuading voters who are either anti-Harris or on the fence, and more about having more resources for more ground game and turnout efforts.
Will be morbidly funny when Nate Cohn is right about realignment, and then the Dems spending millions to turn out low propensity voters ends up getting more Trump voters off the couch
You don't understand turnout operations. Campaigns go to great lengths to figure out who _their_ low propensity voters are, and don't contact the rest. This is one reason good turnout operations take a long time, you can't just spin it up in the last month or two of the campaign. You have to first figure out who to contact, and that is a slow process. A good turnout operation is extremely aware of the risk of turning out opposition voters and goes to great lengths to avoid it.
Fair, I was being a bit flippant. And it’s true I don’t know the level of rigor they’re bringing to their turnout operation. But I’ve found Cohn pretty persuasive and if he’s right, it could be a substantially more difficult problem for Dems to crack this time around. If a greater proportion of low-propensity voter groups are more red than in recent history, that only demands *more* precision from the turnout efforts
Well, it would be strange for a campaign to think it good for them to have more low propensity voters. Democrats never thought it to their benefit when they did. For the first time I ever knew, the D candidate is doing better in LV vs RV polls.
In fact, this development is one reason why Harris could do better than the polling: because people being counted as Trump voters won't vote. It also allows Democrats to focus their resources on a fewer number of people. In the end, a strong turnout operation isn't based on money, it is based on committed people, lots and lots of committed people.
But if the idea is that Dems are careless and turn out Trump voters who used to be Dem voters recently, I suppose it isn't impossible.
this has already been a very annoying part of liberal politics since 2016. bernie sanders and alot of his kin have pushed this notion that america is actually a country that would love medicare for all and similar policies, and he would get 70% of the vote by engaging with the vast mass of voters that often doesnt vote by being the magical FDR like figure that americans dream of.
For my money I think its a bit of magical thinking that only works out in elections like this, so tight that there's basically no valuable public polling outside the margin of error, so campaigns have no choice.
and in a more political sense, politically disengaged americans who talk about some promised savior to return to normalcy are mostly lying in my opinion. Most people who self describe as being in this group actually dont describe a centrist politician with the most broadly appealing viewpoints that the country can get behind, but rather a hodgepodge of idiosyncratic figures that live on the fringes of american politics. these are RFK jr, joe manchin, tulsi gabbard, kyrsten sinema voters, and voters mistake the self party ID of candidates as a sign they must be moderate democrats, and not so over the political center that even moderate republicans dont like them.
The point as I understand it is that in the only states that mattered, the battleground states, the vote was extremely narrow. Wisconsin had to have a recount, for instance. From what I keep reading, Biden's victory in the states that mattered was close to nil.
To me the vibes say Harris. She's closing strong and he's disintegrating. But regardless, your brand is the numbers, so why even write an op-ed about your gut feelings?
That's not what the op-ed is about: within the first 100 words he gets to "But I don’t think you should put any value whatsoever on anyone’s gut — including mine.", tells you to accept that 50-50 really means 50-50, and spends the rest of it giving a list of reasons why the result could plausibly go either way.
The polls have been wrong and biased against in Trump in 2016, and even worse in 2020. You miraculously think that these liberal pollsters are going to fix the situation this year? That Kamala Harris is seriously UNDER polled?! Talk about grasping for desperate straws at this point…
This is the “things never change” bias…if something happened before, then it has to happen again. Also the idea that pollsters are going to report who they want to win rather than who the data they have analyzed to the best of their ability indicates will win—what if pollsters, like Nate here, are more interested in being right? And respect to Nate here, he is admitting from the get-go that no one really knows who’s right because the state of the race is so close. He is hedging all over the place for a reason, and the reason is that he doesn’t want to look like a fool.
- There's much less stigma of being a Trump supporter so if "shy Trump voters" was a thing in 2016 it's probably less so now
- In 2020 if more democrats were at home due to COVID restrictions, less are now
- Pollsters are using things like weighted recalled vote to adjust and using a larger variety of methods to reach voters
An interesting thing about the poll misses in 2020 particularly, was that they underestimated Trump but largely nailed Biden's support. They would have Trump at 42 or 43 percent and he'd end up getting 47 or 48. Now polls show him getting closer to those numbers which is fairly plausible.
What's not plausible is him getting 52 or 53 percent given is favorables and the polarized and partisan make up of the country. So a 2020 underestimation of Trump just does not seem nearly as likely.
The presumed issue with Trump's new minority voters isn't that they're "shy" necessarily about declaring their support, it's that they don't pick up the phone to answer pollsters.
If swing voters/independents break for Trump could he break 50? I think definitionally the answer has to be yes. Assuming a 33/33/33 country whoever wins independents wins the election. And wrt independents the biggest change from 2024 to 2020 is the economy.
It would be interesting to know if any candidate with as high an unfavorable rating ever broke 50% of national vote. I'm not saying it's impossible, just unlikely.
FWIW if Trump wins the popular vote I think the result is far more likely to be 49-47 or something. But I do think that Trump winning the popular vote is plausible.
So far as approval ratings go Harry Enten had a great couple of segments on CNN where he pointed out that it would be historically unprecedented for the incumbent party to win when the right way/wrong way and approval numbers for the President are so unfavorable. I think that's probably more relevant to the discussion here.
I am willing for a rough 2 weeks for a better 4 years. I am in the place of “why didn’t Harris listen to Silver over her gut? Shapiro was the better option to win the Oval. So what if he was a little tentative and big ego?
It hardly mattered about tentative or big ego. Jewish and Zionist mattered, or she thought they did at the time. When Trump takes Pennsylvania and the election, Shapiro will be the whole story for what went wrong, just like Hillary not going to Wisconsin. I am not sure she was wrong, either. Or that Shapiro agreed to do it.
this election does really feel like a reverse 2016.
A somewhat divisive establishment figure more or less cruises through the primary, but does generate some latent animosity among some voters. (hillary/bernie and trump/haley)
meanwhile the other party has a rather rough primary, where the winner faces serious opposition and planned certain defeat. party elders revolt and rebel and spend the entire election certain of a loss, trying to triage the downballot (RNC in 2016/DNC now).
That establishment figure picks a rather uninspiring candidate for VP who doesnt do much for the ticket and feels like the overconfident pick of a campaign that already think's it's won (vance/kaine, though i admit vance has been a more polarizing figure, kaine strikes me in hindsight as a real mistake that didnt animate voters)
The other candidate makes a choice of a midwest gov. to mostly try and shore up the party elders and win over the kinds of voters who were skeptical of the candidate (walz/pence)
If the "liberal pollsters" were really so eager to help Harris that they'd risk sullying their own commercial reputations, their logical move would be to banish any hint of complacency among Democrats by keeping them highly fearful of a Trump victory so as to promote high turnout of Harris voters. This would suggest a course of action that under-plays Harris's support in the polls—not puffs it up.
Also, it's strange you omit any mention of pro-GOP pollster bias. Are you of the opinion that liberal pollsters are all part of a great big cabal but right-leaning pollsters are paragons of virtuous objectivity? This seems rather a cartoonish and simplistic worldview.
Funny you mention right leaning pollsters, but many of those were extremely accurate in 2020: Atlas Intel, Big Data Poll, Insider Advantage, Trafalgar Group. Average errors were around 2.5%, well within the margin of error. Monmouth and Quinnipiac missed by 7.6% and 7.3%, well outside the margin of error.
You assume that mainstream media polls are there to be accurate. They are not. They are there to further a narrative. That's why, despite missing for Biden by 7.3% in 2020, erring on the side of Dems 100% of the time, Quinnipiac is still considered an A rated pollster, Nate overweights them 1.36 and doesn't give them a house effect. In the real world, that poll would be banished forever for having pretty much a 0% accuracy rating. But it's not. It's lauded so the media can prop up the narrative that Harris is winning. Meanwhile they ignore the Gallup party ID results of R+3.
I don't think the "she's got this in the bag" consensus helped Hillary Clinton in 2016. Democratic voters weren't scared at all. But they should've been. I believe puffing up your preferred candidate's numbers in general is very ill-advised, and I find accusations that Dem-leaning pollsters are engaged in this practice unpersuasive—it seems illogical and counterproductive from the perspective of pro-Harris forces.
(Sadly, I do perceive there might be some twisted, tortured logic for doing this if you're a Trump partisan: getting vast swaths of society to think Trump is a sure winner might conceivably be helpful in post election obstructionism or litigation designed to prevent Harris from taking office after a rightful win.)
It's not a question of whether Kamala Harris supporters are underpolled, but rather whether pollsters are overadjusting the results in Trump's favor just because they are concerned about undersampling Trump supporters.
For example, let's take a phone poll. The pollster calls 100,000 phone numbers at random and 2,000 people answer and agree to take the survey. Of those, about 1,200 actually complete the survey. Now let's say in those responses that 900 are Harris supporters, 200 are Trump supporters, and 100 are undecided. How can these numbers be adjusted to produce an estimate of what the actual support percentages are?
Well, let's take adjustment by reported education level as an example. Let's say that 80% of the people responding say they have a college degree, but in the area surveyed, only 40% of the population has a college degree. Then the poll responses of those who have a college degree should be given half as much weight as those who don't have a college degree to weight the results to better match the actual electorate.
Actual polls are weighted by many factors like this, including age, race, ethnicity, gender, income, education, homeowner vs renter, and so on. The issue is that in the original polling data, there are still very few people sampled in some crosstabs (often only 2 or 3), so extrapolating their opinion to that group as a whole leads to higher error.
Going back to Nate's concerns, following the polling miss of 2016, pollsters back tested their data, and found that adjusting for education level would have produced more accurate results, so they started doing that, although that assumes that it is a meaningful and persistent difference. When you go back and hunt through your data, it's possible to find *something* that if corrected for would have produced a more accurate result in the past, but it's also possible that that will result in overfitting, and could make the model perform *worse* in the future. The question on everyone's mind is if pollsters have attempted to weight things in a way that would have made 2020 more accurate, and if that, in turn, is resulting in skewing polls artificially towards Trump. Only time will tell.
Being wrong is not the same as being biased. Nate pointed out that polls were off because they simply weren’t reaching Trump voters—for a variety of reasons.
Failing to reach Trump voters *is* a kind of bias though. It's a classic form of selection bias. Bias isn't a synonym for evil or incompetent or something; being unbiased or doing things in a truly unbiased way is very difficult.
The original commenter implied that the pollsters (which they called “liberal”) were biased against Trump which is not the same as statistical bias. Being biased against someone and acting on that bias is an intentional effort to skew an outcome. Statistical bias refers to something being systematic vs random, but it doesn’t touch on intentionality.
There is something to that. A grandmother was yelled at by her husband for "undoing all his votes." So she never talked to him about elections again, of course ----
I voted for Kerry because Bush let Cheney and Rumsfeld get into a losing Forever War, and I didn't say anything either, till after the election.
Or who don't want to admit it to themselves that for the first time, they may not vote Republican. While I think the Dick Cheney thing is overrated by far, and W would be pointless, I think the folks in his administration now supporting Harris have to have such an effect. Call it gut if you want, but they aren't just endorsing Harris, many are actively campaigning for her in swing states. Milley and Kelly are going to have to have some effect, I just don't know how big.
Excellent update as always, but there is more than a whiff of copium floating in the air- rather like visiting Denver these days. I have always rather liked your popular vote assumptions with respect to electoral college bias (thank a merciful God for the wisdom of the founders). That analysis does seem to correlate to historical trends, If correct, Harris needs a +2-+3 in the popular vote to have a better than 50% chance to win. -1 - -2 % and she has a 99+% chance to lose. Some fairly accurate recent polls are showing just that sort of gap emerging. That gets hidden a bit in averaging sites. But were I a democrat, I would be a bit more worried than what my gut was reporting.
>some fairly accurate recent polls are showing just that sort of gap emerging.<
As Nate points out, the *average* polling inaccuracy in recent presidential cycles has been about three points. I don't know what the history of polling shifts and movement tells us. Is there one more Harris-friendly shift in store (still nearly two weeks left)? If not—and *if* the current polling is highly accurate, then Harris looks overwhelmingly likely to lose. I've been averaging a half dozen aggregators every 5-6 days or so since early September, and her lead today (per my arithmetic) was down to 1.3 points (from 2.5 points on the 18th). One-point-three points is dead in the water territory for her if that's accurate.
But it seems pretty likely the final margin won't be that. Then again, the current degree of polling error (assuming it exists) could end up favoring Trump, just like it did in 2016 and 2020. Or maybe not.
I'm pretty much with Nate on this one: a coin toss, but with my queasy stomach suggesting (absent evidence of a shift in momentum to the contrary) that Trump is more likely than Harris to prevail. But it sure would be nice to know in which direction the polls will be off!
Can any of us conceive the days - a century or more long - when nobody had any such idea? No polls, no internet. Gut was all there was. And very little communication outside of your immediate area. BTW, it also took days to get results, even after the telegraph arrived. Must have been weeks before that.
I do have one Legitimate question Mr Silver, is there any clear correlation from past elections - mid terms as well - between late movement and who wins? It’s been less the polls themselves and more the clear consistent movement toward Donald Trump that has put my gut in the same column as yours.
Oh no Nate Silver said his gut says Donald Trump will win, let’s all attack him rather than our own party leaders for their incompetence and ineptitude!
It is kind of odd for him to publish an NYT column saying this, a week after writing, on multiple days, that Democrats are being ridiculous for panicking.
If you read both articles objectively they are very consistent statements. He also repeatedly says in the same article “but you shouldn’t trust mine, or anyone else’s gut. The polls still speak to a 50/50 race.” The only way they are contradictory is the fact that democrats PANIC unless their candidate is up by ten points.
By the way, it me, I’m a Democrat, and I’m panicking, I just think it’s tiresome how much everyone loves to pile on Nate Silver and accuse him of all sorts of nefarious stuff when his reasoning and approach is very consistent within a cycle
Yeah, though then the headlines in other papers say “Nate Silver says Trump’s gonna win” and helps Trump’s vibes further. I guess that’s not his fault, but he could have seen it happening.
Also, you do realize that this is basically the Democratic messaging right? It’s in my inbox every single day. “Trump’s going to win and turn America into Handmaidens tale if you dont give us money right now!” They are stuck on this fear based messaging since 2016 and everyone has become utterly numb to it. It doesn’t matter if it happens to be true, it’s increasingly ineffective every cycle. You ire should be at our own party elite, who refused to give us a proper primary in December, then forced Kamala onto the ticket when they couldn’t hide bidens decline any longer after the debate (not saying anything bad about her, but it give her an incredibly shit position to campaign from), and refuse to do anything other than play prevent defense in the 4th quarter even though they aren’t even ahead anymore.
I understand that it’s frustrating to see things like that, but it’s self defeating to blame Nate silver for the ways hack media is twisting his words. The outfits saying this are going to be posting non-stop pro Trump bs no matter what the f actual journalists do, their responsibility is to be objective and consistent, not to play the stupid spin game.
This article and the accompanying NYT guest essay are excellent. As someone who consumes political news daily, my gut would also say "Trump." As someone who likes data and knows just enough probability and statistics to be dangerous, my gut says "Harris."
As someone who likes physics, my guy says, "You don't have a time machine, so stop trying to figure out who will win."
Ultimately, this election will be decided by turnout. Young voters turned up in force in the Blue Wall battleground states in 2022, but they didn't vote early. There are over 8 million new potential voters since 2020, and they skew heavily towards Harris.
If they show up in the Blue Wall states, as I think they will, then Harris will likely win. If they don't, she almost certainly won't. And, if they stick to their pattern of not voting early, it's impossible to even make an educated guess right now as to which candidate will win.
Support Kamala Harris and disappear in the crowd, support Trump and get fired from any big tech company (see Palmer Luckey, formerly of Occulus and Facebook).
The persecution complex of Trump supporters vis-a-vis big tech is simply outdated now. Elon Musk and David Sacks are the most vocal Trump supporters in the country ffs
What fraction of people work for big tech? What fraction instead work in small business whose boss wants you to vote for tariffs on foreign goods and an income tax cut for them?
What fraction of people live in a family with a #FoxNews husband/dad? A lot of the “shy Trump” stuff just lacks imagination for how many angles vote shaming can come from
Lol what percentage of people know who their coworkers are voting for? And who is dumb enough to think that telling a pollster makes that public information?
I didn't say what percentage of people *could* know for whom their coworkers plan to vote nor to whom they have made political donations. I said how many do you think care or would bother to do such a thing? Very few, I promise you.
Aside from my purely subjective gut that for a number of reasons this "Feels" like 2016, here are some specific things that may give some insight beyond the polling numbers:
Unless one side or the other has a blowout (certainly possible, but unlikely), then Pennsylvania will most likely determine who wins on November 5. That said, here are two things that happened in Pennsylvania in recent days:
1. Democrat Senator Bob Casey's latest campaign Ad mentions NEITHER Harris NOR even specifically says that he is a DEMOCRAT. Instead, it emphasizes that he is an "independent thinker" who has "bucked Biden on Fracking and Chinese tariffs", and that he has "previoisly demonstrated that he could work across the aisle with Trump." Hmm . . .
2. Trump attended last Sunday-Night's Football Game in Pittsburgh where the Steelers were playing. When it was announced that Trump was there, the crowd cheered fairly loudly and began chanting, "USA, USA, USA".
So if you're trying to look under the objective radar of the polls and get a subjective gut feel of what may be happening in the streets, you might find those two things interesting.
I don't find either point particularly useful. Senate Dems have outperformed Biden then Harris pretty much all cycle. Not mentioning Harris and shifting towards the middle in messaging is good strategy.
My guess is football crowds skew pretty significantly towards Trump. It's not surprising that he got a decent reception there. He's had great receptions at NASCAR and UFC events in other places (though those probably skew even further towards Trump supporters).
Same. I'd be surprised if NFL fandom wasn't at least 60-40 or thereabouts in Trump's favor, based on simple demographics. I'd imagine NASCAR fans skew pretty GOP, too. And NBA fans less so. But even if it's not that high—and that stadium was 50-50 down the middle Trump/Harris voters—half of a stadium shouting "USA" is going to sound plenty loud...
Point 1 says a lot. Senate Dems may have outperformed Biden and now Harris, but if your internal polling suggests Harris will win, guess what? Tying yourself to her is a good political strategy. If her positions are unpopular, and she is unpopular then you're best bet is to distance yourself from her. There's no imaginary middle ground for liberals to say, "but but but" over, she either looks strong because she'll win, or weak because she'll lose.
Or you could read point one as downballot Dems courting Republicans who won't vote for Trump but are still open to other GOP candidates at the state and local level.
Well, "bet hedging" is more something liberals tell themselves to feel better when they see their own candidates run from each other, than legitimate political strategy recognized by people who are actually paid to run campaigns. Maybe it's a bold new strategy the DNC came up with this year, but FYI it's not a common technique.
“If polling firms were still applying the same techniques they did in 2016 and 2020, we’d probably be seeing a Harris lead in the Electoral College right now. Instead we have a toss-up, more or less”
Why haven’t any outfits released a “here’s what our data would look like given our 2020/2016” approach? Would be very informative to this discussion, but maybe it would highlight the large amount of subjective modeling work at play in a way that pollsters would prefer not to talk about.
I suspect that some of the difference is the methods they are using to get in touch with voters and get them to respond to the poll. This is going to be harder to “undo” than just changing the likely voter model.
In any case, I’m not sure why the modeling is said to be “subjective” here.
“Subjective” because of the subjective judgement calls that go into defining the model.
That’s not how it works. You don’t refer to a length measurement as “subjective” because you chose to use a ruler
That analogy doesn’t work, as other commenters have pointed out. A lot of decisions go into constructing a model, as Nate has made abundantly clear in many many posts. Not only what to include, but in the choice of parameters. Not even remotely like a ruler. And when it comes to pollsters, just look at the whole “likely voter” issue.
Of course, that doesn’t make model construction *purely* subjective. Arguably it’s more objective than subjective. But it was obvious to me what Casey meant. I disagree only with the claim that “pollsters prefer not to talk about” it. I’ve read more articles on these issues in the last few weeks than I can count.
You misunderstand the analogy. The instrument choice is the model choice. There are actually choices to be made about the instrument to use.
We don’t refer to this as “subjective measuring” because, again, that would remove meaning from the word subjective. Further it would imply existence of “objective modeling”, and of course by this standard that’s just not a thing. Even if someone else built the model you’re still choosing to apply it.
I think I understood the analogy just fine. It’s a bad analogy because basically the only relevant variables with measuring lengths is the desired degree of precision, and the range of lengths. Yardsticks made of wood, metal, or plastic will give the same results. That’s far from being the case with these kinds of models.
I think you misunderstood what Casey meant by “subjective”. You’ve constructed a strawman definition. He didn’t say “subjective measuring”, he said “subjective modeling”. If your beef is that he should have said “modeling using models in whose construction subjective choices were made”, okay, fine…
If we were measuring something as concrete as the physical length of an object we wouldn't have so much disagreement between models either
Tool & methodology is subjective, not the tool.**
** Actually even laboratory ruler use is slightly subjective as you record a digit more precise than smallest gradient.
Using “subjective” like you are makes everything subjective, word loses meaning. I look forward to ignoring your philosophy 101 essay assignment defense of this
correct
There's a lot of subjectivity in polling. It's not an exact science. Previous methods of reaching prospective voters don't work any longer. Response or non-response biases. Shifting party identification. Overweighting certain sub-groups. Case in point this year most polls still use D+3 to D+7 weighted models, when Gallup shows it is R+3. If this is true, those polls will miss outside the margin of error.
Read other replies, this has already been addressed.
Edit: Other than your favourite 🤡🚗 talking point you love to bang on. 🤣🤣 No need to take that even remotely seriously
Wait, so you think a poll that's D+7 is representative of the current electorate?
Cool, so let's bet, you and me. I've already put my money where my mouth is by placing multiple bets on Kalshi. But I find your side never has the strength of their conviction to put money on the line.
Simple bet. I bet that all the big polls will again miss election results outside the margin of error (2.5%).
Deal?
Agreed that it’s likely impossible to truly reconstruct data using past models, but you could certainly experiment to get a bit closer and understand the impact of the change.
For example, some outfits have chosen to include “drop offs” this year; folks who confirm they’re voting for a candidate but hang up before the end of the call. This was theorized as one of the reasons for undercounting Trump-specific support in past elections.
Well, now firms have some actual data; was the theory true? What do the results look like if you include/don’t include drop offs?
Etc.
One thing I don’t understand is how they actually include drop-offs in the results. Like, if the only information they have about them is who they’re voting for and where they live (and maybe they’re voter registration data in states that make that available), how do they know how to weight those respondents when they do demographic adjustments? I guess they could use the demographic % breakdowns for D/R voters in the area they live as a placeholder, but even has potential for skewing things if Trump/Harris dropoffs in that area tend to have different demographics than those candidates’ voter in general. And if their LV screens are in anyway based on questions in the survey, how do they treat drop-offs on that front if they didn’t answer all the questions?
What are you going to do with the drop-offs? Outside of postmortem
Other Nate goes into this in the second of the NYT articles linked here (the first is a very interesting summary of the main theories for why that polling error existed in 2020/2016). The most wide-spread method for adjustment, according to him, is "weighing by recalled vote". I only kinda understand the methodology as he describes it, but it boils down to getting info on who respondents voted for in the previous presidential election, then adjusting how those voters are accounted for by demographic. Most polls are using some form of this method
In practice, this means that polls are being adjusted to the results of the previous election (2020, midterms aren't a factor). Cohn goes into the potential pros and cons of using this strategy (Pro: it would account for another pervasive polling error in Trump's favor, Con: it would have made polling results LESS accurate in every 21st century presidential election).
I'd really recommend that article, it's super interesting. There's no "remove recalled vote weighting" button, but Cohn does compare their model to a version of their state averages that only include polls without recalled vote weighting. It aligns a lot closer to 2022 than to 2020: Harris increases her leads in the midwestern swing states, Trump increases his in Arizona and Georgia, while Nevada and North Carolina are basically the same. That results in a slightly lower popular vote advantage for Harris, but a relatively significant electoral college lead
(It's important to note that this article is from 2 weeks ago. The Silver Bulletin model leaned 54% Harris at that point)
I saw that article, and it’s part of why I’ve increasingly wanted more data from some of the polling outfits.
Cohn didn’t do a great job explaining the mechanism, though. Basically, it’s a selection issue: there’s an increased likelihood that political moderates who actually voted for Trump will instead remember themselves voting for Biden. Given their past lean, these folks are also likely to vote for Trump again, giving pollsters the mistaken impression that a Biden 2020 voter is now a Trump 2024 voter. Add that up across the electorate, and you get a tendency to overstate the chances for the loser of the last election.
Appreciate that clarification. He does a much better job explaining it in their most recent newsletter, the older article would've benefitted a lot from a simplified explanation. I do wish individual pollsters in general, especially the really big-shot ones, were more open in showing how different adjustments and weighting affected their results.
I really appreciate that Nate does it here, but that's after aggregating all of those other polls. There's no possibility to see how decisions on the more subjective aspects of polling have changed that final number. More importantly, we're not seeing WHY those decisions are being made in the first place. Other Nate's articles were fantastic not just because they get a bit into how adjustments to methodology have affected the polls, but also they describe pollsters' reasoning for making those adjustments in the first place (which seem relatively sound imo)
The only question I have about this is that, could that bias impacted by the fact that (for the first time since 1956) the loser of the last election is literally on the ballot. Anybody who actually did vote for Biden and now is voting for Trump may see telling the pollster that as admitting a mistake, could they possibly then lie and say they voted for Trump before? And could the same effect mean that there are less people who voted for Trump last time who say they voted for Biden? Or if some people aren’t being intentionally misleading and instead just misremember due to a bias toward the winner (I don’t know how somebody could forget who they voted for in any race, much less a recent one) could the presence of the same candidate again jog their memory so they recall correctly?
Great thread. Thanks for the clarity. Well done. Also agree with comment about how aggregation hides the details, including important ones. I’m more convinced than ever that polling error will likely favor Harris. But I also recognize that I might me confusing my wishes with reality.
Your inane use of “subjective” adjective aside:
> that pollsters would prefer not to talk about.
Outside the few true scam artists, for those that have even a modicum of professional self esteem, you should count yourself lucky if you can get them to STFU about it. 🤣
There is a chart that calculates the position if the polls were as wrong as they were in 2020 and 2022; they show Trump up
substantially in the seven battlegrounds on the 2020 miss but trailing in all but Georgia on the 2022 miss.
Sorry, but that’s not the same thing; that’s just applying the “error” from each state to current results. Instead, I’d like to see the results if pollsters ran their current data through their older models.
nyt siena did do this actually
Title of essay: Nate Silver: Here’s What My Gut Says About the Election. But Don’t Trust Anyone’s Gut, even mine.
How it is being reported in other headlines: Nate Silver says his instinct is that Trump will win.
That was written as a joke but after looking it up it doesnt go far enough
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=nate+silver&iar=news&ia=news
"Trump is going to win election, says America's top pollster" is a real headline.
I like Nate a lot but acting as if he isn’t setting the vibes through these posts the past two weeks just as much as the rest of the media is bananas.
I wish I know what people mean when they say "vibes."
Nate isn't a top pollster, because he IS NOT a pollster.
He's an analyst, and one of the best. Why else are you paying for this site?
That headline is from The Telegraph, which isn't exactly the most reputable news source. Also, FWIW, they recently changed the headline to say "analyst" instead of "pollster", so I suspect several people told them.
Nate got 2016 more right than others because he had access to inside information from the Dem campaign.
"One of the best". How?
Media doesn't understand nuance. In other news, the Pope shits in the Vatican.
Nate knows this happens. He joked about it in another post. He can't be responsible for how media writes headlines. It is funny, though. Nice post, detailing that.
FWIW (nothing, as Nate persuasively argues), my gut is Kamala, because every single data point I have *other* than the polls says its absolutely insane that Trump could win. I realize that this is part of being in the "bubble" of people who are aware of things like how Trump Chief of Staff John Kelly reported that Trump wished he could have "Hitler's generals" but was unfamiliar with who Rommel was.
"every single data point I have *other* than the polls says its absolutely insane that Trump could win"
Another data point: Democratic Senate candidates in PA, MI, WI are **currently** running campaign ads touting how they voted for some Trump bills when they were in Congress. Why would savvy, experienced Democratic politicians start advertising to their voters that they sided with Trump? Costs a lot of campaign funds to run those ads.
https://www.axios.com/2024/10/18/senate-democrats-campaign-ads-trump-2024
I mean, they are responding to the polls, so it's really the same data point.
I meant more things like:
1) enthusiasm I see around town (lots of yards in my neighborhood with signs for the R congressional candidate but conspicuously no Trump sign - which is different than 2016 or 2020)
2) social media enthusiasm levels (although this may in part reflect some self-segregating, as conservatives have adopted Twitter as their platform of choice and liberals have fled it -- but there is still a sizeable conservative faction on Reddit, and I'm just seeing a lot less pro-Trump stuff than I did in 2016 or 2020)
3) Trump's promises v. Trump's record -- it's one thing to believe the guy's rhetoric about helping the little guy in 2016 (which is why I very much thought he could win back then), but it's another thing entirely after he governed like a typical Republican, with a booster shot of chaos and insanity. But again, I recognize that I'm probably in a bubble that is aware of what Trump actually did instead of just having vague nostalgic vibes about the pre-covid times.
Social media isn't real life. The data points I see that favor Harris I'm interested in are things like
1. Number of small dollar donors.
2. Number of volunteers (not paid canvassers).
3. The fact that Trump underperformed his polls in the primaries and Biden didn't.
4. The sizeable overperformances of Democrats in special elections all year.
I'm not sure that these are actually meaningful, but Trump doesn't have any real data to counter that.
Early voting.
What about early voting? The data I've seen looks good for Harris in PA, MI, and WI and more mixed in the other swing states.
But it's hard to take that seriously because there's no point of comparison. There's no Covid to drive a ton of mail in voting like 2020, but both sides are encouraging their voters to vote early (unlike 2016).
Democrats typically hold an edge compared to Republicans in early voting.
1. Even absent Covid early voting is breaking records right now--largely driving by increased Republican utilization.
2. Contribution to the vote in GA for black voters is much lower than normal.
3. In Nevada Republicans haven't led in early voting since at least 2008. They're ahead now.
Party Identification is R+3 for the first time in a long time. If polls use D+3 to +7, they will miss bigly.
The trend is towards Trump in all polls and betting markets.
Republicans made massive gains in voter registration in key swing states, thanks in part to grassroots orgs like Turning Point, Scott Pressler, Chase PA, 100X, etc.
Early data coming out shows massive turnout in red counties, and those with propensity data show it is 0/4 or 1/4 Rs coming out, so they are not cannibalizing ED votes.
Miami-Dade is R+10 in early voting right now, insane.
Nevada is R+ right now as Jon Ralston admits.
Articles coming out daily on the panic setting in amongst Dems.
There was a significantly larger number of relatively high profile Republicans who endorsed the Democrat this time around, so it's hard to say how many of those +R advantages are actually Harris votes.
That poll isn't party registration, it's "Do you feel more like a Democrat or a Republican today?"
Why would somebody who's going to vote for Harris say "I'm a registered independent but I feel closer to the Republicans"?
Polls consistently show both Harris and Trump are getting 95% of each party's respective voters. There's not going to be a mythical large number of Rs voting for Harris. If so, it would be canceled out by the Ds voting for Trump (RFK, Gabbard supporters, etc.).
The sign thing is obviously anecdotal, but it’s hard not to notice. I’ve seen more Harris signs than I did Biden,l and Clinton—I saw almost no Clinton signs. I still see Trump signs, but not as many as 2020 or 2016. I saw a ton in 2016.
In the immortal words of Pauline Kael, after Nixon's 1972 landslide victory (49 states, only Massachusetts went for McGovern):
" I can't believe Nixon won, I don't know anyone who voted for him", spoken from Manhattan's Upper East Side.
I wouldn't call the words immortal when she never said them. Here's the actual quote: "I live in a rather special world. I only know one person who voted for Nixon. Where they are I don’t know. They’re outside my ken. But sometimes when I’m in a theater I can feel them."
She was perfectly aware that she lived in a vacumn chamber, not oblivious to it like the false quote implies.
The "How did candidate X win, I don't know anyone who voted for him" is real. There were definitely people who said that on 1980 in Berkeley about Reagan.
And I've seen similar lines about Trump 2020 used as "proof" that the election was rigged.
Right, but I’ve been three states in the last two months, and in a mix of conservative/liberal locals within those states.
A few months ago I was in farm country chatting with a farmer about how tough it was to slaughter his pet cow. That the kind of place you visited?
Trump helping the little guy, as in median household income adjusted for inflation (up 12.4% for Black working class people, up 8% for white working class during Trump years. Up 0.8% for Blacks under Biden/Harris, down 1.5% for whites).
Sounds like the little guy did quite well under Trump and got whacked under Biden/Harris
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA672N
You and I both know that Trump's policies didn't have anything to do with that -- which is probably why you didn't talk about any policies.
"You and I both know that Trump's policies didn't have anything to do with that "
Restricting illegal immigration to 1/6 of its current numbers which reduces the supply of low-wage workers (ever heard of the law of supply and demand setting prices and wages?).
Replacing NAFTA with new trade pact that has specific targets for US content in manufactures imported from Mexico.
Imposing tariffs and technology restrictions on China to prevent US trade from enriching our most powerful adversary
Inflation at less than 2% for the duration of the term
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/10/01/migrant-encounters-at-u-s-mexico-border-have-fallen-sharply-in-2024/
Those all sound like inflationary policies to me. But what do I know, I’m just an economist who works in finance.
Why does immigration today matter for setting wage levels in 2017 to 2019?
At the time, immigration into the US was an all time high.
Early voting.
It's still early (nyuk nyuk nyuk) but Republicans seem to be happier than Demkcrats with the early voting tabs.
At least in Texas, I've seen R campaign offices making yard signs available free for all on the ballot except Trump. You have to pay for one of those.
I understand this may not feel intuitive, but most people who identify as conservative but who are still on the fence about Trump, hate him as a person but like a few of his policies.
The goal for senate / house Dems running in swing states is to pull the few palatable Trump policies they support, while drawing contrast to between them and the far right policies supported by Trump and the Republican running against them.
That would clearly show this ad approach by Kasey in PA as smart and not at all in conflict with Kamala having just as good a chance to win PA as Trump.
This is the problem with the popular stat driven side of politics and the sometimes misguided out of touch understanding of how normal people think and vote. Most voters are complicated and have contradictory view points. You can’t just do one-size fits all approach to reaching the persuadable voter.
Also, if Kasey was so afraid of tying himself with Harris, he wouldn’t have stumped for her numerous times in the last few months. This is the second or third time I’ve seen someone use this as evidence of Dems giving up or acknowledging Trump will win and that’s just not the case.
So why has Baldwin declined to appear with Harris in WI?
Casey hasn't campaigned with Harris yet either. And then there's this:
https://www.axios.com/2024/10/18/senate-democrats-campaign-ads-trump-2024
The polls have been showing downballot Democrats running ahead of Harris. It points to the existence of a good number of Trump/Downballot D voters (or Undecided/Downballot D, edit - or Trump/Undecided). These voters are definitely worth targeting for downballot Democrats. It doesn't point towards an overperformance for Trump because that data is taken directly from the polls as they are.
Fwiw I'm dubious about the size of that gap. It doesn't make a lot of sense to me. I expect either the downballot Democrats will underperform, or Harris will overperform. But it's pretty clear what the polls are saying.
Or the pollsters are adjusting their numbers so they don't release outliers
"Why would savvy, experienced Democratic politicians start advertising to their voters that they sided with Trump?"
This is probably hopelessly naive. But one possible answer is, "because it's good for the country".
Partisanship in the US needs to go down. If we were to suppose that people high up in the Democratic party actually *do* care about democracy, then we should expect them to do that. People who are anti-Trump should recognise that America's problems don't all just suddenly go away in the event that he loses the election (and the loss sticks).
I’d be interested to see whether voters do switch parties. I believe I saw somewhere that switching parties between elections was quite a lot higher than I thought.
Because they're trying to pick up whatever "leans Republican but are undecided" voters are left.
And because they don't understand that undermining the Harris campaign by advertising they supported Trump policies in Congress could have repercussions for them if Harris wins?
The media made a big deal out of it, but I kind of doubt that their ads are going to make anyone say, “Oh, wow, I was totally going to vote for Harris, but this one guy said he could be bi-partisan, so now I'm going to vote for Trump.”
To get Republicans who are sick of Trump to vote for them, obviously.
Yeah, "absolutely insane that Trump could win" is not based on anything happening in the actual election. It just means, "I don't want it to happen! I don't want it! I don't want it!!!"
Serious question - Do you actually think an undecided swing voter 2 weeks before an election, who is likely apolitical by nature, knows or cares who John Kelly is? Or even cares about a Trump = Hitler comparison as if they haven’t heard it for the last 8 years?
Gotta remember that the people deciding this election are not political nerds paying for polling analysis from Nate Silver.
I don't think anyone knows. That's why said I recognize I'm in a bubble.
I think if they knew, some might care - this isn't someone else saying Trump is Hitler, this was Trump saying he wishes he *was* more like Hitler!
Thing is, anyone who this would have traction with is already in Harris' camp. The whole "Trump admires Hitler" thing has been reported/alleged before. The fact that CNN is hitting it so hard today I see as a sign of panic.
Snopes debunked such a claim back in 2019:
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-hitler-mein-kampf/
someone specifically stated that this happened on the record so the snopes "debunking" is irrelevant lol.
Ohhh so they stated it happened! Then it must have happened, because it's not like people lie or anything.
I didn’t say it definitely happened, but I’d pose the question to you of why everyone who worked with Trump has similar stories. Is the likelihood that all these senior military figures, who served our country for forty years with integrity, are all lying about Trump? All of his secretaries of defense, his chief of staff, his vice president, his attorneys general, his first Secretary of State. They’re all lying? Or Trump is? Sincerely what is more likely.
There are different kinds of swing voters. The moderate Republican pro-choice suburbanite, who has always voted Republican in the past, likely knows who John Kelly is. In any case, should anybody run into a report of that interview, they will be told who he is. But it is the former swing voter, who may even be a shy Harris voter, who would be affected by Kelly's comments.
I believe once there was a survey done of when Boris Johnson kept on saying: Get Brexit done. I think only 30% could recall it. The point being that most people don’t listen to politics and messages need to be really quick and easy to remember. I think Trump has done better here (not perfect) with the key points and why the stories and huge campaign slogans cut through. Unfortunately he needs to do them now.
100% this.
As another person with a meaningless gut feeling that Kamala will pull it out, I tend to agree.
The other big reason my gut says Harris is that pollsters have much more incentive to avoid underestimating Trump than they do to avoid underestimating Harris, which surely affects them consciously and subconsciously.
My gut says Kamala too largely based on what you said in your last paragraph. Nate said in his last sentence that it’s probably equally likely for a pro-Trump miss and a pro-Harris miss. I think with the weighting by recalled vote being relatively abundant that it’s less likely Trump support is underestimated a third time. It’s either pretty accurate or we are underestimating Kamala’s strength IMO
Saying you want "Hitler's generals" is not an endorsement of Hitler himself. Those officers tried to kill him. Instead, it reflects the high regard for German military leadership in many post-WW2 studies. Similarly, studies have shown German soldiers were objectively more efficient than counterparts in other countries.
Although Kelly said that Trump revealed in the conversation that he didn't know that Hitler's generals tried to kill him, and Trump didn't know who Rommel was. Occam's Razor here: the dude likes Nazis.
What does 'efficient' mean? What studies are you talking about?
Everything I've ever read indicates that the American military was superior to the German military in basically every way except for the fact that the Germans overengineered their vehicles (but even this is really another reason the American military was superior, because America made vehicles that could be easily mass-produced).
Sure. Shame about their leadership (generals, Hitler himself) pointlessly over-stretching them and then needlessly trapping a bunch of them in Stalingrad.
I mean, there are data points within the polls that also point in her favor. For example, the younger a voter is, the less likely they are to say they plan to vote early. Yet, those young voters *did* show up in 2020, and they *did* show up in the Blue Wall battleground states in 2022.
The media loves to harp on the fact that young voters didn't show up as expected in 2022, but they never focus on individual states. Young voters vote when the issues are important to them *and* when they think their vote can make a difference.
Combine that with the fact that none of the Blue Wall states restricted voting (not for a lack of trying, Pennsylvania) since 2020, and I fully expect young voters to show up in force on or before election day.
All of that is a valid analysis based on data. It would be absurd to try to use it to predict that Harris will win. However, it's equally absurd to ignore data like that and claim that Trump will win just because polls have had a tiny change and Republican early voting numbers are up! (I'm not accusing Nate of doing that; I'm speaking generally.)
I don't believe that. Everyone knows who Rommel was. I wish we DID have another Rommel for the USA!
Wait, that doesn't make me a fascist, does it??
If that was your point, you would have said it right after talking about the big Trump sign. Or after your first comment about the farmer. But you didn’t.
It’s genuinely fascinating to watch the counflip nature of this election open an X-ray into everyone’s soul.
Nate, professional hater and liberal contrarian, is ranting about Kamala’s weak campaign. The betting markets, mostly a certain type of dude, are going further and further toward Trump. Anti Trump Republican Mike Murphy keeps waffling back and forth. I spend half my time in despair and half my time optimistic.
God, please end this hell!
As someone who is basically completely divorced from the American political spectrum, it's becoming increasingly tempting to just move to Switzerland and bunker down for the next few decades.
Sounds good --- send us back some chocolate. Yodel when it's coming.
Can you get a 4-year Swiss tourist visa? 😁
Ah the "coin flip". I have been following Nate since 2008 and appreciate the scientific rigor. But my question is this. It seems no matter the analysis or commentary or what-if scenario ("take out RFK", "take out partisan polls"), you could replace the headline of every post to be "Race is a coin toss". If, in a polarized electorate, every election is going to be within a a few points, and if you're going to call any win probability between 40% and 60% a "coin toss" (seems reasonable to me) - then what is the point of all this polling and all this analysis?
For this content specifically, the point is entertainment value. Do you enjoy reading the thoughts of Nate Silver, who thinks about elections in a statistical way? And do you enjoy reading it enough to pay for it?
I sure do. And so do many others. And that's the only reason this exists.
Busted. I enjoy it. I pay for it.
I had kinda hoped for greater societal value too ha. Maybe Nate or Eli could tell us some time in a post.
The point of the polling at least, is that that's the only reason we *know* that it's a toss up. Elections aren't always close.
Imagine if voters had categorically rejected Harris after Biden dropped out - maybe she was tainted too much by association. It's easy to imagine that having happened, but the polls are reasons to think that that hasn't happened. It's easy to miss the importance of polls in this, because there's tonnes of vibes that will tell you Harris wasn't rejected. But a lot of those vibes are *informed* by the polls. Vibes tend to be given a lot more weight when they align with polls, and that's one of the few good things there is to say at them.
Or simpler, imagine if Biden hadn't dropped out.
Biden would then have gotten the endorsement of the Teamsters union.
Union voters are about 14% of the electorate in PA, MI, WI.
That's what I thought, too! Might have saved the Dems the election, having the unions in their pocket.
I’m not at all sure he would have but I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t have saved him regardless.
Yeah this ambivalence from blue collar union leaders seems more driven by an attempt to hedge bets than any political ties, and the teamsters in particular seem driven by internal politics. Many teamster bosses who voted in agreement with non endorsement then turned around and had their locals endorse. While they've thrown around a survey of members as justification, the panel of teamsters members that interviewed candidates chose harris.
Sean O'brien in particular seems to be trying to flirt with right wingers that actively despise union labor, in an effort that is likely to only lose political allies than gain any new ones.
Is it actually true that everything is between 40% and 60%? I went and double checked the 538 forecast for the 2020 election and the final prediction was an 89% chance of a Biden victory. https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2020-election-forecast/
The ultimate result was close, but that isn't the same thing as the election being a toss up.
Odds of a Trump victory are approaching 70% on betting markets. All the signs point to a Trump victory, but the Election Mafia is too scared to say so.
To be fair, the betting markets predicted the British would vote AGAINST Brexit.
Whoops. They didn't. I am not impressed that these bettors are different from the rest of us, just predicting the winner we want.
That's really the opposite of the important take: betting markets said there was a 25% chance that Brexit would happen in an environment where many high profile people were convinced it wouldn't happen, and then it did happen. 25% chance is a *lot*. David Cameron certainly didn't think it had a 25% chance of passing when when called the referendum.
This is similar to Nate at 538 giving Trump a 1 in 3 chance to win in 2016. While less than 50%, it was a lot higher than other people were saying, and a lot higher than the conventional wisdom. Judging these things is tricky because they aren't repeated, and it's easy to fool yourself that there isn't any real uncertainty, *someone* knows what's going to happen. But if you roll a d6 and one person says it's 60% going to come up 1, and another person says it's 17% going to come up 1, and then it comes up 1, who was actually correct?
Most bettors aren't different from the rest of us, but some of them are. The thing that's special about betting markets is that people who are smart get a direct financial incentive to tip the scales back in favour of the genuine best-knowledge probability.
There isn't always enough smart money to counter the stupid money, but at least the smart money has a mechanism to fight back. If the stupid money is distributed roughly proportionately to population, then for things that are decided by popular vote (or close to it), the smart money be able to compensate for any imbalance in that distribution.
Again, it's this issue that we can't do statistics on one-time events, or individuals. It's either yes or no: like the election. It's not a 25% chance, it's one person or the other.
No prediction market is 100% accurate. But the overall picture and trend shows massive favor in Trump's direction.
Yeah, until there’s some break in the stale mate, I tend to agree. The elections are closer than the margin of error.
It's like the joke "Economists have successfully predicted 9 of the last 5 recessions".
Eventually political realignment will happen, because change is the only certainty, but trying to predict when and what it will look like is pure speculation. We won't know until after it happens.
I can't understand why you think the election is close if you don't think polls are valid. There is no reason we can't wake up to a landslide for one candidate or the other: that's the usual way polls misfire in our polling history. The other way is that the pollsters say it will be a landslide for X but it turns out a landslide for Y.
Almost none.
This is the only presidential election where Silver's model has it in the 40-60 percent range, dating back to 2008. Even this year, it wasn't always in that range when it was Biden vs. Trump, and it might not end up in that range for Harris vs. Trump.
The point of the polling is to establish with rigor that the race is in fact, and remains, a close one. I’m not sure what you mean by asking about the point of the analysis. Why would a close race be less appropriate to analyze than a lopsided race? If anything, I think it would be more so.
I ask the question because *every* nationwide race for the foreseeable future will be close enough for win probabilities to be within 40 to 60% and therefore a "toss up". Or am I wrong about that?
You probably are right about that; I agree, anyway. I just don’t see why that should mean no one should talk about it. It seems interesting to discuss publicly why that is the case and why it remains the case.
Yes, I'd love to read some thoughtful discussion of why we seem stuck in a knife-edge 50/50 state for so long. I keep being afraid it's because we have turned into two nations, a bimodal distribution with essentially no actual "median voters". (But even if that's true, it doesn't answer the question of why it's 50/50.)
It's probably just not true. Polls usually aren't true.
But everyone saying it's 50/50 keeps us clicking on their clickbait for weeks.
You're right of course, there is nothing at all wrong with discussing this stuff. I just sometimes wonder if the huge sums spent on conducting (and influencing and pundit-ing) polls, with near certainty that result will be "too close to call", might not be better spent on polls asking people what they want for the future.
In fairness, the most important decision of the election — replacing Biden with Harris — was made because of polling.
Have to admit I look at the silly discrepancy between betting odds and expert forecasts, and just as in 2020 I start thinking of easy(ish) money via arbitrage. Worked like a charm four years ago.
100% agree that the usual kind of guy (almost certainly guy) who bets on elections is very likely the kind of guy who would wear a red baseball cap with white writing on it.
You and me, both!
I like Carville's gut better.
I read Carville’s piece and it just didn’t register with me. His first point really conveys nothing at all in relation to this current election cycle. His second point is just that Harris has more money, but I am highly skeptical of this because voter opinions about the economy and the border appear very entrenched and unlikely to move, regardless of how many Harris ads flood the airwaves. He admits his third point is just his feelings.
I’m much more amenable to the argument that Harris’s team has a much better ground and turnout game for their voters, though this is somewhat mitigated by the fact Harris would actually benefit from lower turnout overall.
If Harris' turnout operation is well run, they are mostly contacting likely supporters who are also low propensity voters. They would only be pushing higher turnout among their own supporters. First of all, this is why canvassing operations do multiple contacts: early contacts are to determine if a voter is a likely supporter. Second, this is why turnout operations that span multiple election cycles are stronger: you keep the data from the previous cycle and so start off knowing a lot about who is a likely supporter and not.
How many low propensity voters does Harris have, though? Everything I’ve read seems to indicate not very many compared to Trump. This leads me to believe her effective turnout game may not be enough to counteract Trump’s, even if his is substantially worse, because Trump simply has more low propensity voters to draw from.
Your math here is lacking, Harris doesn't need to turn out as many low-propensity voters as Trump. Her coalition is far less dependent on low-propensity voters and if her turnout operation gets 80% of 30% of her base and 100% of the 70% who are high propensity, she gets 94% of her coalition out. If Trump gets out 75% of his low-propensity voters who are 80% of his base and 100% of the 20% of his base who are high propensity voters, he gets 80% of his coalition out and Harris wins comfortably even though she's turning out far fewer (as an absolute number) of low-propensity voters than Trump is. These are obviously made up numbers, but the point holds that Trump's lagging ground operation when relying substantially on low-turnout groups could be fatal for him.
Well she should be miles ahead in polls considering “likely voters” then, no?
not really, you do see Harris up by like 6 points with voters who have voted in each of the last four elections which is where this would show up. Whether or not the campaigns get their marginal voters to the polls would be less reflected in likely voter numbers than in actual turnout differentials. Turning a "probably not voting" voter into an actual voter would not show up in polling but would show up in the final tally. Trump's excelled at that in 2020 but the ground differential was flipped.
I reply to both of your comments, both are possible. Harris almost certainly has a stronger traditional turnout operation. But nobody could say if some very popular podcasts can make up for that. And it does seem that Trump has more low propensity voters now. But Democratic leaning low propensity voters are now concentrated among young voters, and there are still a lot of them.
For example, Trump may turnout way more low propensity voters just by doing Andrew Schultz’s podcast and the reported Rogan appearance than anything Harris’s ground game can match.
The "having more money" argument is less about persuading voters who are either anti-Harris or on the fence, and more about having more resources for more ground game and turnout efforts.
Will be morbidly funny when Nate Cohn is right about realignment, and then the Dems spending millions to turn out low propensity voters ends up getting more Trump voters off the couch
You don't understand turnout operations. Campaigns go to great lengths to figure out who _their_ low propensity voters are, and don't contact the rest. This is one reason good turnout operations take a long time, you can't just spin it up in the last month or two of the campaign. You have to first figure out who to contact, and that is a slow process. A good turnout operation is extremely aware of the risk of turning out opposition voters and goes to great lengths to avoid it.
Fair, I was being a bit flippant. And it’s true I don’t know the level of rigor they’re bringing to their turnout operation. But I’ve found Cohn pretty persuasive and if he’s right, it could be a substantially more difficult problem for Dems to crack this time around. If a greater proportion of low-propensity voter groups are more red than in recent history, that only demands *more* precision from the turnout efforts
Well, it would be strange for a campaign to think it good for them to have more low propensity voters. Democrats never thought it to their benefit when they did. For the first time I ever knew, the D candidate is doing better in LV vs RV polls.
In fact, this development is one reason why Harris could do better than the polling: because people being counted as Trump voters won't vote. It also allows Democrats to focus their resources on a fewer number of people. In the end, a strong turnout operation isn't based on money, it is based on committed people, lots and lots of committed people.
But if the idea is that Dems are careless and turn out Trump voters who used to be Dem voters recently, I suppose it isn't impossible.
this has already been a very annoying part of liberal politics since 2016. bernie sanders and alot of his kin have pushed this notion that america is actually a country that would love medicare for all and similar policies, and he would get 70% of the vote by engaging with the vast mass of voters that often doesnt vote by being the magical FDR like figure that americans dream of.
For my money I think its a bit of magical thinking that only works out in elections like this, so tight that there's basically no valuable public polling outside the margin of error, so campaigns have no choice.
and in a more political sense, politically disengaged americans who talk about some promised savior to return to normalcy are mostly lying in my opinion. Most people who self describe as being in this group actually dont describe a centrist politician with the most broadly appealing viewpoints that the country can get behind, but rather a hodgepodge of idiosyncratic figures that live on the fringes of american politics. these are RFK jr, joe manchin, tulsi gabbard, kyrsten sinema voters, and voters mistake the self party ID of candidates as a sign they must be moderate democrats, and not so over the political center that even moderate republicans dont like them.
Money help GOTV and legal fights about voting procedures and vote counting.
Link?
Of course, liking it and believing are different things.
Whether Harris benefits from low turnout depends on who sits out. 2020 was a really big turnout election and Trump lost it pretty handily.
No, Trump barely lost 2020 at all: that's the big lesson people keep driving home. He didn't lose it "handily" ---- he hardly lost it at all.
electoral college: 306-232
popular vote: 81.3mm-74.2mm
The point as I understand it is that in the only states that mattered, the battleground states, the vote was extremely narrow. Wisconsin had to have a recount, for instance. From what I keep reading, Biden's victory in the states that mattered was close to nil.
And the fact that he got all the 🍻? 😝
To me the vibes say Harris. She's closing strong and he's disintegrating. But regardless, your brand is the numbers, so why even write an op-ed about your gut feelings?
That's not what the op-ed is about: within the first 100 words he gets to "But I don’t think you should put any value whatsoever on anyone’s gut — including mine.", tells you to accept that 50-50 really means 50-50, and spends the rest of it giving a list of reasons why the result could plausibly go either way.
The polls have been wrong and biased against in Trump in 2016, and even worse in 2020. You miraculously think that these liberal pollsters are going to fix the situation this year? That Kamala Harris is seriously UNDER polled?! Talk about grasping for desperate straws at this point…
This is the “things never change” bias…if something happened before, then it has to happen again. Also the idea that pollsters are going to report who they want to win rather than who the data they have analyzed to the best of their ability indicates will win—what if pollsters, like Nate here, are more interested in being right? And respect to Nate here, he is admitting from the get-go that no one really knows who’s right because the state of the race is so close. He is hedging all over the place for a reason, and the reason is that he doesn’t want to look like a fool.
Yeah, like if Trump won in 2016, he has to always win, so it is stolen if he doesn't.
If that's the case, why are these pollsters still using D+3 to D+7 samples when Gallup shows it as R+3?
Yeah, but _how_ have things changed? If Trump is getting more disengaged minority voters that may be even tougher for pollsters to handle
A few things that have plausibly changed:
- There's much less stigma of being a Trump supporter so if "shy Trump voters" was a thing in 2016 it's probably less so now
- In 2020 if more democrats were at home due to COVID restrictions, less are now
- Pollsters are using things like weighted recalled vote to adjust and using a larger variety of methods to reach voters
An interesting thing about the poll misses in 2020 particularly, was that they underestimated Trump but largely nailed Biden's support. They would have Trump at 42 or 43 percent and he'd end up getting 47 or 48. Now polls show him getting closer to those numbers which is fairly plausible.
What's not plausible is him getting 52 or 53 percent given is favorables and the polarized and partisan make up of the country. So a 2020 underestimation of Trump just does not seem nearly as likely.
The presumed issue with Trump's new minority voters isn't that they're "shy" necessarily about declaring their support, it's that they don't pick up the phone to answer pollsters.
If swing voters/independents break for Trump could he break 50? I think definitionally the answer has to be yes. Assuming a 33/33/33 country whoever wins independents wins the election. And wrt independents the biggest change from 2024 to 2020 is the economy.
It would be interesting to know if any candidate with as high an unfavorable rating ever broke 50% of national vote. I'm not saying it's impossible, just unlikely.
FWIW if Trump wins the popular vote I think the result is far more likely to be 49-47 or something. But I do think that Trump winning the popular vote is plausible.
So far as approval ratings go Harry Enten had a great couple of segments on CNN where he pointed out that it would be historically unprecedented for the incumbent party to win when the right way/wrong way and approval numbers for the President are so unfavorable. I think that's probably more relevant to the discussion here.
Trump just exceeded Harris in favorability in a latest poll by Gallup:
Favorable/unfavorable (registered voters)
🔴 Trump: 52%-47% (+5)
🔵 Harris: 47%-52% (-5)
Gallup | 10/22
Doesn't seem very likely they will turn out at high rates
If the polling is correct and the election is super tight it could be significant.
I am willing for a rough 2 weeks for a better 4 years. I am in the place of “why didn’t Harris listen to Silver over her gut? Shapiro was the better option to win the Oval. So what if he was a little tentative and big ego?
It hardly mattered about tentative or big ego. Jewish and Zionist mattered, or she thought they did at the time. When Trump takes Pennsylvania and the election, Shapiro will be the whole story for what went wrong, just like Hillary not going to Wisconsin. I am not sure she was wrong, either. Or that Shapiro agreed to do it.
You sound the way I (a Democrat) sounded in 2016.
this election does really feel like a reverse 2016.
A somewhat divisive establishment figure more or less cruises through the primary, but does generate some latent animosity among some voters. (hillary/bernie and trump/haley)
meanwhile the other party has a rather rough primary, where the winner faces serious opposition and planned certain defeat. party elders revolt and rebel and spend the entire election certain of a loss, trying to triage the downballot (RNC in 2016/DNC now).
That establishment figure picks a rather uninspiring candidate for VP who doesnt do much for the ticket and feels like the overconfident pick of a campaign that already think's it's won (vance/kaine, though i admit vance has been a more polarizing figure, kaine strikes me in hindsight as a real mistake that didnt animate voters)
The other candidate makes a choice of a midwest gov. to mostly try and shore up the party elders and win over the kinds of voters who were skeptical of the candidate (walz/pence)
If the "liberal pollsters" were really so eager to help Harris that they'd risk sullying their own commercial reputations, their logical move would be to banish any hint of complacency among Democrats by keeping them highly fearful of a Trump victory so as to promote high turnout of Harris voters. This would suggest a course of action that under-plays Harris's support in the polls—not puffs it up.
Also, it's strange you omit any mention of pro-GOP pollster bias. Are you of the opinion that liberal pollsters are all part of a great big cabal but right-leaning pollsters are paragons of virtuous objectivity? This seems rather a cartoonish and simplistic worldview.
Funny you mention right leaning pollsters, but many of those were extremely accurate in 2020: Atlas Intel, Big Data Poll, Insider Advantage, Trafalgar Group. Average errors were around 2.5%, well within the margin of error. Monmouth and Quinnipiac missed by 7.6% and 7.3%, well outside the margin of error.
You assume that mainstream media polls are there to be accurate. They are not. They are there to further a narrative. That's why, despite missing for Biden by 7.3% in 2020, erring on the side of Dems 100% of the time, Quinnipiac is still considered an A rated pollster, Nate overweights them 1.36 and doesn't give them a house effect. In the real world, that poll would be banished forever for having pretty much a 0% accuracy rating. But it's not. It's lauded so the media can prop up the narrative that Harris is winning. Meanwhile they ignore the Gallup party ID results of R+3.
Can that backfire? Will voters turn out more in a complete toss-up or what is trending a loss according to media?
I don't think the "she's got this in the bag" consensus helped Hillary Clinton in 2016. Democratic voters weren't scared at all. But they should've been. I believe puffing up your preferred candidate's numbers in general is very ill-advised, and I find accusations that Dem-leaning pollsters are engaged in this practice unpersuasive—it seems illogical and counterproductive from the perspective of pro-Harris forces.
(Sadly, I do perceive there might be some twisted, tortured logic for doing this if you're a Trump partisan: getting vast swaths of society to think Trump is a sure winner might conceivably be helpful in post election obstructionism or litigation designed to prevent Harris from taking office after a rightful win.)
It's not a question of whether Kamala Harris supporters are underpolled, but rather whether pollsters are overadjusting the results in Trump's favor just because they are concerned about undersampling Trump supporters.
For example, let's take a phone poll. The pollster calls 100,000 phone numbers at random and 2,000 people answer and agree to take the survey. Of those, about 1,200 actually complete the survey. Now let's say in those responses that 900 are Harris supporters, 200 are Trump supporters, and 100 are undecided. How can these numbers be adjusted to produce an estimate of what the actual support percentages are?
Well, let's take adjustment by reported education level as an example. Let's say that 80% of the people responding say they have a college degree, but in the area surveyed, only 40% of the population has a college degree. Then the poll responses of those who have a college degree should be given half as much weight as those who don't have a college degree to weight the results to better match the actual electorate.
Actual polls are weighted by many factors like this, including age, race, ethnicity, gender, income, education, homeowner vs renter, and so on. The issue is that in the original polling data, there are still very few people sampled in some crosstabs (often only 2 or 3), so extrapolating their opinion to that group as a whole leads to higher error.
Going back to Nate's concerns, following the polling miss of 2016, pollsters back tested their data, and found that adjusting for education level would have produced more accurate results, so they started doing that, although that assumes that it is a meaningful and persistent difference. When you go back and hunt through your data, it's possible to find *something* that if corrected for would have produced a more accurate result in the past, but it's also possible that that will result in overfitting, and could make the model perform *worse* in the future. The question on everyone's mind is if pollsters have attempted to weight things in a way that would have made 2020 more accurate, and if that, in turn, is resulting in skewing polls artificially towards Trump. Only time will tell.
This is really clear and informative. Thank you.
But they aren’t liberal pollsters. More than half are GOP operations
Being wrong is not the same as being biased. Nate pointed out that polls were off because they simply weren’t reaching Trump voters—for a variety of reasons.
Failing to reach Trump voters *is* a kind of bias though. It's a classic form of selection bias. Bias isn't a synonym for evil or incompetent or something; being unbiased or doing things in a truly unbiased way is very difficult.
The original commenter implied that the pollsters (which they called “liberal”) were biased against Trump which is not the same as statistical bias. Being biased against someone and acting on that bias is an intentional effort to skew an outcome. Statistical bias refers to something being systematic vs random, but it doesn’t touch on intentionality.
I thought that said "Virginia's polls" lol
Isn't there an element of "shy Kamala" voters who may be Republican and "never Trumpers" and do not want to admit that openly?
And women who don't want their husbands to know they're voting for Harris
There is something to that. A grandmother was yelled at by her husband for "undoing all his votes." So she never talked to him about elections again, of course ----
I voted for Kerry because Bush let Cheney and Rumsfeld get into a losing Forever War, and I didn't say anything either, till after the election.
Or who don't want to admit it to themselves that for the first time, they may not vote Republican. While I think the Dick Cheney thing is overrated by far, and W would be pointless, I think the folks in his administration now supporting Harris have to have such an effect. Call it gut if you want, but they aren't just endorsing Harris, many are actively campaigning for her in swing states. Milley and Kelly are going to have to have some effect, I just don't know how big.
Excellent update as always, but there is more than a whiff of copium floating in the air- rather like visiting Denver these days. I have always rather liked your popular vote assumptions with respect to electoral college bias (thank a merciful God for the wisdom of the founders). That analysis does seem to correlate to historical trends, If correct, Harris needs a +2-+3 in the popular vote to have a better than 50% chance to win. -1 - -2 % and she has a 99+% chance to lose. Some fairly accurate recent polls are showing just that sort of gap emerging. That gets hidden a bit in averaging sites. But were I a democrat, I would be a bit more worried than what my gut was reporting.
>some fairly accurate recent polls are showing just that sort of gap emerging.<
As Nate points out, the *average* polling inaccuracy in recent presidential cycles has been about three points. I don't know what the history of polling shifts and movement tells us. Is there one more Harris-friendly shift in store (still nearly two weeks left)? If not—and *if* the current polling is highly accurate, then Harris looks overwhelmingly likely to lose. I've been averaging a half dozen aggregators every 5-6 days or so since early September, and her lead today (per my arithmetic) was down to 1.3 points (from 2.5 points on the 18th). One-point-three points is dead in the water territory for her if that's accurate.
But it seems pretty likely the final margin won't be that. Then again, the current degree of polling error (assuming it exists) could end up favoring Trump, just like it did in 2016 and 2020. Or maybe not.
I'm pretty much with Nate on this one: a coin toss, but with my queasy stomach suggesting (absent evidence of a shift in momentum to the contrary) that Trump is more likely than Harris to prevail. But it sure would be nice to know in which direction the polls will be off!
Can any of us conceive the days - a century or more long - when nobody had any such idea? No polls, no internet. Gut was all there was. And very little communication outside of your immediate area. BTW, it also took days to get results, even after the telegraph arrived. Must have been weeks before that.
I do have one Legitimate question Mr Silver, is there any clear correlation from past elections - mid terms as well - between late movement and who wins? It’s been less the polls themselves and more the clear consistent movement toward Donald Trump that has put my gut in the same column as yours.
Oh no Nate Silver said his gut says Donald Trump will win, let’s all attack him rather than our own party leaders for their incompetence and ineptitude!
Let’s attack everyone’s got instead and get them to relax.
Relax? What does this mean?
It is kind of odd for him to publish an NYT column saying this, a week after writing, on multiple days, that Democrats are being ridiculous for panicking.
I don’t find it odd, but I also don’t live in a binary world
Nor do I.
I guess I didn’t mean odd, like suspicious—more just like, lame. I think he should have waited a few days.
If you read both articles objectively they are very consistent statements. He also repeatedly says in the same article “but you shouldn’t trust mine, or anyone else’s gut. The polls still speak to a 50/50 race.” The only way they are contradictory is the fact that democrats PANIC unless their candidate is up by ten points.
By the way, it me, I’m a Democrat, and I’m panicking, I just think it’s tiresome how much everyone loves to pile on Nate Silver and accuse him of all sorts of nefarious stuff when his reasoning and approach is very consistent within a cycle
Yeah, though then the headlines in other papers say “Nate Silver says Trump’s gonna win” and helps Trump’s vibes further. I guess that’s not his fault, but he could have seen it happening.
Also, you do realize that this is basically the Democratic messaging right? It’s in my inbox every single day. “Trump’s going to win and turn America into Handmaidens tale if you dont give us money right now!” They are stuck on this fear based messaging since 2016 and everyone has become utterly numb to it. It doesn’t matter if it happens to be true, it’s increasingly ineffective every cycle. You ire should be at our own party elite, who refused to give us a proper primary in December, then forced Kamala onto the ticket when they couldn’t hide bidens decline any longer after the debate (not saying anything bad about her, but it give her an incredibly shit position to campaign from), and refuse to do anything other than play prevent defense in the 4th quarter even though they aren’t even ahead anymore.
I understand that it’s frustrating to see things like that, but it’s self defeating to blame Nate silver for the ways hack media is twisting his words. The outfits saying this are going to be posting non-stop pro Trump bs no matter what the f actual journalists do, their responsibility is to be objective and consistent, not to play the stupid spin game.
This article and the accompanying NYT guest essay are excellent. As someone who consumes political news daily, my gut would also say "Trump." As someone who likes data and knows just enough probability and statistics to be dangerous, my gut says "Harris."
As someone who likes physics, my guy says, "You don't have a time machine, so stop trying to figure out who will win."
Ultimately, this election will be decided by turnout. Young voters turned up in force in the Blue Wall battleground states in 2022, but they didn't vote early. There are over 8 million new potential voters since 2020, and they skew heavily towards Harris.
If they show up in the Blue Wall states, as I think they will, then Harris will likely win. If they don't, she almost certainly won't. And, if they stick to their pattern of not voting early, it's impossible to even make an educated guess right now as to which candidate will win.
So, here's to waiting!
And to a very stressful evening on 11/5.
Support Kamala Harris and disappear in the crowd, support Trump and get fired from any big tech company (see Palmer Luckey, formerly of Occulus and Facebook).
Why would that lead to underpolling?
Wild to use "big tech" as the example here when SV has warmed up to Trump more than anywhere else https://x.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1847236476498522321
The persecution complex of Trump supporters vis-a-vis big tech is simply outdated now. Elon Musk and David Sacks are the most vocal Trump supporters in the country ffs
It's outdated now. Kind of crazy how fast it flipped.
And get hired by Musk, or Palantir, or any of Marc Andreesen's cronies. Plenty of billionaire techies are supporting Trump.
What fraction of people work for big tech? What fraction instead work in small business whose boss wants you to vote for tariffs on foreign goods and an income tax cut for them?
What fraction of people live in a family with a #FoxNews husband/dad? A lot of the “shy Trump” stuff just lacks imagination for how many angles vote shaming can come from
Bunk.
Luckey was kept on long after his leaning was well known.
The other high profile cases that MAGA people whine about are similar.
People lose jobs, then blame other people all the time.
Lol what percentage of people know who their coworkers are voting for? And who is dumb enough to think that telling a pollster makes that public information?
“what percentage of people know who their coworkers are voting for”
Possibly by looking FEC records for political contributions, which can be searched by employer.
That was easy.
I didn't say what percentage of people *could* know for whom their coworkers plan to vote nor to whom they have made political donations. I said how many do you think care or would bother to do such a thing? Very few, I promise you.
What percentage of voters do you think make political contributions?
"Nobody really knows anything' --
William Goldman, world's greatest philosopher!
Aside from my purely subjective gut that for a number of reasons this "Feels" like 2016, here are some specific things that may give some insight beyond the polling numbers:
Unless one side or the other has a blowout (certainly possible, but unlikely), then Pennsylvania will most likely determine who wins on November 5. That said, here are two things that happened in Pennsylvania in recent days:
1. Democrat Senator Bob Casey's latest campaign Ad mentions NEITHER Harris NOR even specifically says that he is a DEMOCRAT. Instead, it emphasizes that he is an "independent thinker" who has "bucked Biden on Fracking and Chinese tariffs", and that he has "previoisly demonstrated that he could work across the aisle with Trump." Hmm . . .
2. Trump attended last Sunday-Night's Football Game in Pittsburgh where the Steelers were playing. When it was announced that Trump was there, the crowd cheered fairly loudly and began chanting, "USA, USA, USA".
So if you're trying to look under the objective radar of the polls and get a subjective gut feel of what may be happening in the streets, you might find those two things interesting.
I don't find either point particularly useful. Senate Dems have outperformed Biden then Harris pretty much all cycle. Not mentioning Harris and shifting towards the middle in messaging is good strategy.
My guess is football crowds skew pretty significantly towards Trump. It's not surprising that he got a decent reception there. He's had great receptions at NASCAR and UFC events in other places (though those probably skew even further towards Trump supporters).
Same. I'd be surprised if NFL fandom wasn't at least 60-40 or thereabouts in Trump's favor, based on simple demographics. I'd imagine NASCAR fans skew pretty GOP, too. And NBA fans less so. But even if it's not that high—and that stadium was 50-50 down the middle Trump/Harris voters—half of a stadium shouting "USA" is going to sound plenty loud...
And all those unions in the supposedly blue wall that are NOT going for Harris --- isn't that a first, ever? Since unions started?
Point 1 says a lot. Senate Dems may have outperformed Biden and now Harris, but if your internal polling suggests Harris will win, guess what? Tying yourself to her is a good political strategy. If her positions are unpopular, and she is unpopular then you're best bet is to distance yourself from her. There's no imaginary middle ground for liberals to say, "but but but" over, she either looks strong because she'll win, or weak because she'll lose.
Or you could read point one as downballot Dems courting Republicans who won't vote for Trump but are still open to other GOP candidates at the state and local level.
You're missing the obvious (and highly likely) possibility that the polling suggests it's razor close. It's called bet hedging.
Well, "bet hedging" is more something liberals tell themselves to feel better when they see their own candidates run from each other, than legitimate political strategy recognized by people who are actually paid to run campaigns. Maybe it's a bold new strategy the DNC came up with this year, but FYI it's not a common technique.