It’s often been said that in the age of the internet, there is a lot less meaningful information available, and nowhere is this more evident than in the morass of Election 2024 polls. The closer the nation gets to Election Day, the more pollsters appear to be providing the American electorate with mountains of inconsequential data. Here is some hard evidence to back up this premise.
Beginning on Oct. 21 until yesterday, Oct. 28, 14 national polls were released by the supposed best and brightest polling firms in the United States. One can only imagine what it costs to find out so little. Of the nationwide surveys released in this short time, seven claim that only one point or less separates the presidential candidates:
New York Times/Siena: TIE
Emerson: TIE
TIPP: TIE
CNN: TIE
CBS News: Harris +1
Rasmussen: Harris +1
USA TODAY/Suffolk: Harris +1
Four ties. Really? Could it be that some folks fear putting their stamp on something meaningful? Have pollsters come down with a severe case of the gun-shy flu? Meanwhile, the other seven results are not precisely earth-shattering but at least provide the reader with some information:
CNBC: Trump +2
Forbes: Trump +2
WSJ: Trump +3
Economist/YouGov national multi-candidate: Harris +3
Reuters/Ipsos: Harris +3
Morning Consult: Harris +4
ABC News/Ipsos: Harris +4
Election 2024 – Is it Really That Close?
Anyone with a pulse remembers the giant mea culpa pollsters had to issue after Donald Trump won the presidency in 2016. However, in 2020, they mostly got it right, and then in 2022, they mostly got it right again. So why do the pollsters appear to be hedging their bets this time around?
One theory – and this is admittedly a supposition – is that they don’t feel comfortable going into the final days of Election 2024 with Trump leading. It’s almost as if they say it out loud, it might become reality. Another theory is that MAGA voters are extremely hard to poll. Could it be because they have been labeled everything from irredeemable to deplorable to not very intelligent followers of a fascist? That might cause some people to pause when expressing their intentions publicly.
Fear of the ‘L’ Word
It’s been a deluge of polls for months now, first with Joe Biden as the Democratic candidate and then with Kamala Harris. Ostensibly, it was the poll numbers that caused the historic last-minute major party candidate shift after Biden’s disastrous debate performance. Once Harris’ convention bump began to fade, the polls started to tighten, and this is where they primarily pitched their tent. However, signs too difficult to ignore now have many a political analyst willing to openly suggest the notion of a Trump landslide. One must wonder why the polls do not reflect that – at the very least – Trump is pulling away from Harris in this last crucial week.
Shockingly, Harry Enten, a CNN polling analyst of all things, was willing to posit the idea of a blowout this week on NJ.com. “So this time around, don’t be surprised at the swing state polls. When they underestimate one candidate, they underestimate all of them in the states, and that’s what leads to a relative Electoral College blowout, with one of the candidates winning at least 300 electoral votes.” In the same article, pollster Nate Silver was reported as making a similar prediction.
Both Kellyanne Conway, an expert pollster, and Tom Bevan, publisher of RealClearPolitics, are calling for something labeled a narrow landslide. Bevan postulates this could come about if the swing state dominoes begin to fall in Trump’s direction:
"’Trump is currently leading in the RealClearPolitics averages in all of these swing states, but by very slim margins,’ he explained. ‘His biggest leads are in Georgia (Trump +2.5%) and Arizona (Trump +1.8%). But this idea of a “Narrow Landslide” would be if he wins all of them, and ends up with 312 electoral votes, but it could happen by just a few thousand votes in some of these states.’"
Conway agreed and asserted, “Voters are looking for stability and results. Trump’s ability to tap into their concerns about the economy and national security is driving this projection.”
While denying the word "landslide" should be attributed to his remarks, political analyst Mark Halperin told podcaster Megyn Kelly, “But there's a school of thought that says, Trump's going to go to Albuquerque to try to win New Mexico. He's going to go to St. Paul to try to win Minnesota. He's going to go to, I don't know, Richmond to try to win Virginia.” The question then becomes why waste a candidate’s precious time in a place he or she could not possibly win?
Many analysts appear to be suggesting that the former president is on the precipice of a major win in Election 2024, but don’t look to the polls to confirm this potential outcome. They are too busy covering their collective derrieres instead of informing the American public of anything meaningful. Either that or the voting public should just ignore national polls, something we’ve been saying all along.
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