Can you trust the polls? Prediction fever takes over 2024 election
Who is going to win the 2024 presidential race?
That question is vexing the country as all types of prognosticators — whether they be pollsters, academics or international odds-makers — advertise their data and intuition to voters eager for a peek into a crystal ball predicting either a future Kamala Harris or Donald Trump administration.
No one knows what will happen on Nov. 5 as tens of millions of Americans have already cast theirballots as part of early voting and with tens of millions more still yet to vote their preference for who should lead the nation for the next four years.
But the country is anxious about the outcome amid an increasingly bitter political divide.
More than 7 out of 10 U.S. adults say the nation’s future, its economy and politics are a “significant source of stress” personally, according to a report released this month by the American Psychological Association.
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“It shouldn’t be passive. It shouldn’t be something that people are not speculating on because it’s a really big deal and this election in particular is critical,” said Imani Cherry, a professor of media and public affairs at George Washington University.
“There are a number of very, very, very important issues front of mind for millions and millions of people,” Cherry added.
As the unprecedented election between Harris and Trump comes to a close, experts say it is irresponsible for political observers to foretell a winner.
“Polling is not predictive. It’s a snapshot in time,” Republican pollster Robert Blizzard said. “My job isn’t to try and predict a result, my job is to use polling to help my candidate or client’s cause or issue be successful.”
The 50-50 contest has been largely unmoved by major news events, including President Joe Biden’s summertime exit, persistent economic woes, Harris’ historic bid and two assassination attempts against Trump.
Those who spoke with USA TODAY said any prediction on Trump or Harris winning the White House will be riddled with flaws thanks to the deluge of polling in the final days, coupled with partisan surveys aimed at influencing the base, sports bettors looking to make a buck, and prediction models using firms with dubious backgrounds.
Others point out how there has been a noticeable lack of quality swing-state surveys that typically populate the final weekends of a general election, while some say it might be time for newsrooms to reconsider leaning on polling stories altogether.
“People need to get off the poll-er coaster. They need to step back from it because people are gaming it and they’re playing in our faces,” said Democratic pollster Cornell Belcher, who worked on both of Barack Obama presidential campaigns in 2008 and 2012.
“It is not the job of a poll or pollsters to tell the future, because we can’t,” he added.
Predicting the horse race’s winner
The U.S. hasn’t had a double-digit blowout White House race since 1984 when GOP incumbent President Ronald Reagan coasted to victory by winning 49 out of 50 states against Democratic challenger Walter Mondale.
Elections have been closer ever since, including the races in 2000 and 2016 where the Democrat won the popular vote but fell short in the Electoral College. Add to the mix a hyper-competitive media landscape and now in 2024 a cottage industry of pollsters, pundits and even gamblers who seek to give each side – and nervous undecided voters – a preview of what will happen.
Chief among them is FiveThirtyEight, which since 2008 has become the most popular database that strategists, news organizations and average viewers often cite in the horse race for the most powerful job on the planet. It utilizes a complex statistical model on potential outcomes and currently favors Trump, who wins 51 out of 100 simulations.
But critics say people shouldn’t read too much into these models given they often use polling firms with different ratings of accuracy.
FiveThirtyEight, for example, reminds its audience how Harris once held a higher probability of winning weeks ago and that it could change if “a few good polls” show up for the incumbent vice president.
The site notes how when the chance of winning hovers in the 50s it is a “little better than a coin flip for the leading candidate,” and its founder, Nate Silver, penned a New York Times op-ed saying, “50-50 is the only responsible forecast” during this cycle.
And the models aren’t always right, such as in the 2012 election, when then-President Obama defied the trajectory to defeat his Republican challenger Mitt Romney. Trump similarly overcame forecasts that predicted Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton would win in 2016. Many firms also undercounted his performance in 2020.
What’s troubling for experts in the final stretch of the 2024 race is how predictive models could be influenced by partisan efforts to bulk up a candidate’s polling averages, which can be dicey in the era of misinformation as herds of supporters are likely to assume their candidate should win based on polling trends or early voting data.
The New Republic reported earlier this month about a flood of Trump-aligned polls being released over the summer with the goal of impacting changing election forecasts in his favor.
For Trump supporters, especially, there is a worry that his loss may ignite a reaction similar to the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol should the former president lose.
Blizzard, the GOP pollster, said he hasn’t conducted any surveys for the Trump campaign this year but he’s certain there are firms on both sides of the partisan divide who only spotlight data showing their side doing well while burying the bad polls.
“If I don’t know the pollster, meaning if they don’t have actual clients, a clear track record or only do horse race polling, I’m less likely to even care about their numbers,” he said.
Most campaign polling is over at this point in the race, Blizzard said, and legitimate firms have shifted to using their data to make decisions about advertising and other resource allocation.
What experts find more worrisome than bad actors looking to manipulate the narrative is how few people understand that a point or two lead is a statistical tie that can go either way.
Cheery, the media and public affairs professor, said the press plays a significant role in this conversation because polling stories are easier to feed audiences.
She said more emphasis is needed on the consequences of Harris and Trump’s policy differences.
Rather than making predictions, Cheery said she focuses her students on grassroots conversations among voters about the stakes of the White House race and the ways people can be engaged in the democratic process over entertainment-styled coverage about who will win.
“It’s not that I don’t think polls have a place in this political discourse, but oftentimes they are so myopic,” she said. “Especially when we’re really talking about numerous variables that are going to come into play in people’s choices and for people who may say, ‘all the polls said (Trump) was going to win, and he didn’t—it was rigged.'”
‘An iffy and dangerous business’
About 34 million Americans have voted early already in 2024, with Democrats holding a slight edge, according to the University of Florida Election Lab, which tracks the numbers daily.
It shows roughly 41% of votes cast have come from registered Democrats, versus 35% from registered Republicans, for instance. But those who have measured the American voter’s mindsets for years say there are perils with diving too deep into early voting data as well.
For starters, much of the early voting data is based upon states where people register by party. Another caveat is that the baseline comparison is the 2020 election, when ballot access was expanded for the first time in response to the global COVID-19 pandemic.
Cathy J. Cohen, a political science professor at the University of Chicago, has been surveying Black and Hispanic voters for months as part of GenForward, a youth project at the college.
The average American doesn’t realize the limitations or nuances of polling data, she said, including sample size, demographic representation and how the survey’s questions are worded and ordered. All impact each survey’s result, Cohen said.
“There’s a big difference and a big gap between people answering a survey and people putting on their coat, getting in a car, taking the bus, waiting in line and making sure they’re registered to cast a vote,” Cohen said.
Instead of paying attention to possible outcomes, political observers should focus on trends across an election cycle. But that hasn’t stopped other groups and outfits from filling that void as more established firms appear to be taking a step back in 2024.
Many offshore betting markets, such as Polymarket, the world’s largest crypto trading platform, have been cited by Trump and his allies – with predictions that the Republican will win a second, non-consecutive term as president. One French trader reportedly bet a total of $28 million across four different accounts on the GOP nominee returning to power.
Joshua Barton, a spokesman for BetOnline.ag, said betting on U.S. elections on everything from who will win to turnout levels has skyrocketed in popularity over the past decade.
“As far as the amount wagered, it will eclipse what the Super Bowl does because there are so many big bettors that come in they want a stake on who’s going to win this election,” Barton said in an interview.
Some may never wager on anything else for another four years, he said, but participants want to have action on the outcome.
It’s still murky how much these and other yardsticks – such as the stock market‘s levels ahead of presidential elections – can predict who might prevail between Trump and Harris. But it concerns Cohen and other academic experts who say polling should be more about identifying how Americans are thinking, rather than fortune-telling or money-making.
“They can be used to give some sense of a prediction, but I would be leery of weighting too much of our sense of what’s going to happen based on polls,” she said.
“It’s an iffy, dangerous business when you’re talking about human behavior.”
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