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Can you trust the polls? Prediction fever takes over the 2024 election

Online Niel October 26, 2024

Who will win 2024 presidential race?

This question bothers the country like all types of predictors – whether they are surveys, academics or international odds factors — advertise their data and intuition to voters eager to peer into a crystal ball that predicts either a future Kamala Harris or Donald Trump administration.

No one knows what will happen on November 5, as did tens of millions of Americans already thrown their ballots as part of early voting and with tens of millions 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 a widening political divide.

More than 7 in 10 US adults say the future of the nation, its economy and politics are a “significant source of stress” personally, according to a report released this month by the American Psychological Association.

“It shouldn’t be passive. It shouldn’t be something that people don’t speculate about because it’s a very big deal and this election in particular is critical,” said Imani Cherry, a professor of media and public affairs at the University George Washington. .

“There are a number of very, very, very important issues on the minds of millions and millions of people,” Cherry added.

As the unprecedented election between Harris and Trump draws to a close, experts say it is irresponsible for political observers to predict a winner.

“Polls are not predictive. It’s a snapshot in time,” said Republican pollster Robert Blizzard. “My job is not to try to predict an outcome, my job is to use the polls to help my candidate or client’s cause or issue succeed.”

The 50-50 contest was largely unmoved by major news events, including President Joe Biden’s Summer Outingpersistent economic problems, Harris’ historic offer and two assassination attempts against Trump.

Those who spoke to USA TODAY said any prediction of Trump or Harris winning the White House will be riddled with flaws thanks to the deluge of polls in recent days, along with partisan polls designed to sway the base, sports bettors looking to cash in. . and prediction models using firms with dubious backgrounds.

Others point to the fact that there has been a noticeable lack of quality polling for the swing states that typically populate the final weekends of general elections, while some say it may be time for newsrooms to reconsider relying entirely on stories surveys.

“People need to get off the rollercoaster of pollsters. They need to get off of it because people are playing games and playing games in front of us,” said Democratic pollster Cornell Belcher, who worked on both Barack Obama’s presidential campaigns in 2008 and 2012.

“It’s not for a poll or pollsters to tell the future, because we can’t,” he added.

Predicting the winner of the horse race

The US has not had a double-digit race for the White House since 1984, when incumbent President Ronald Reagan swept to victory, winning 49 of 50 states against Democratic challenger Walter Mondale.

Elections have been closer since then, including races in 2000 and 2016 in which 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 trying to give each side — and nervous, undecided voters — a preview of what’s to come.

Chief among them is FiveThirtyEight, which since 2008 has become the most popular database that strategists, news organizations and ordinary viewers often cite in the horse race for the most powerful job on the planet. It uses a complex statistical model of potential outcomes and currently favors Trumpwhich wins 51 out of 100 simulations.

But critics say people shouldn’t read too much into these models because they often use survey firms with different accuracy ratings.

FiveThirtyEight, for example, reminds its audience how Harris was once more likely to win weeks ago and that could change if “some good polls” emerge for the incumbent vice president.

The site notes that when the odds of winning hover in the 50s, it’s “little better than a coin toss for the leading contender,” and its founder, Nate Silver, wrote a New York Times op-ed saying, ” 50-50 it is only responsible forecasting” during this cycle.

And the patterns aren’t always right, such as in the 2012 election, when then-President Obama defied the trajectory to defeat his Republican rival Mitt Romney. Trump similarly beat forecasts predicting that Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton would win in 2016. Many firms also underestimated his performance in 2020.

What worries pundits in the final stretch of the 2024 race is how predictive models could be swayed by partisan efforts to boost a candidate’s polling averages, which can be dangerous in the age of disinformation, as herds of supporters could assumes their candidate should. win based on voting trends or early voting data.

The New Republic reported earlier this month about a wave of Trump-aligned polls being released during the summer, with the aim of influencing the change of electoral forecasts in his favor.

For Trump supporters in particular, there is concern that his loss could spark a backlash similar to the January 6, 2021 riot at the Capitol if the former president were to lose.

Blizzard, the GOP pollster, said it hasn’t done any polling for the Trump campaign this year, but it’s sure there are firms on both sides of the partisan divide that just highlight data that shows their side is doing well while burying bad polls .

“If they don’t know the poll, meaning if they don’t have real customers, a clear track record, or they’re just doing horse race polls, I’m less likely to even care about their numbers,” he said.

Most campaign surveys have ended at this point in the race, Blizzard said, and legitimate firms have moved on to using their data to make decisions about advertising and other resource allocations.

What pundits find more troubling than bad actors looking to manipulate the narrative is how few people understand that a point or two advantage is a statistical tie that can go either way.

Cheery, a professor of media and public affairs, said the media plays a significant role in this conversation because poll stories are easier to feed to the public.

She said more emphasis is needed on the consequences of Harris and Trump’s policy differences.

Instead of making predictions, Cheery said he focuses his students on grassroots conversations among voters about the stakes of the White House race and ways people can get involved in the democratic process, rather than entertainment-style coverage of who will win. .

“It’s not that I don’t think polls have a place in this political discourse, but they’re often so short-sighted,” she said. “Especially when we’re really talking about the numerous variables that are going to come into play in people’s choices and for people who might say, ‘all the polls said (Trump) was going to win and he didn’t — he was rigged. .'”

“Unsafe and Dangerous Business”

About 34 million Americans have already voted in early 2024, with Democrats holding a slight lead, according to the University of Florida Election Labwho tracks the numbers daily.

It shows that about 41 percent of the votes cast came from registered Democrats, compared to 35 percent from registered Republicans, for example. But those who have measured the mindsets of American voters for years say there are dangers in delving too deeply into early voting data as well.

For starters, much of the early voting data is based on states where people register by party. Another caveat is that the baseline comparison is the 2020 election, when voting access was first expanded in response to the global COVID-19 pandemic.

Cathy J. Cohen, a political science professor at the University of Chicago, has been polling black and Hispanic voters for months as part of GenForward, a college youth project.

The average American doesn’t realize the limitations or nuances of survey data, she said, including sample size, demographic representation and how survey questions are worded and ordered. All influence the outcome of each poll, Cohen said.

“There’s a big difference and a big gap between people who respond to a survey and people who put on a coat, get in a car, take a bus, stand in line and make sure they’re registered to vote,” Cohen said .

Rather than paying attention to possible outcomes, political observers should focus on trends over an election cycle. But that hasn’t stopped other groups and outfits from filling the void, as more established firms look set to take a step back in 2024.

Many offshore betting markets such as Polymarket, the world’s largest crypto trading platformwere cited by Trump and his allies — with predictions that the Republican would win a second, nonconsecutive term as president. A French merchant He reportedly bet a total of $28 million in four different accounts of the GOP candidate’s return to power.

Joshua Barton, a spokesman for BetOnline.ag, said US election betting on everything from who will win to turnout levels has skyrocketed in popularity over the past decade.

“In terms of the amount bet, it’s going to eclipse what the Super Bowl does because there are so many big bettors who want a bet on who’s going to win this election,” Barton said in an interview.

Some may never bet on anything else for another four years, he said, but participants want to act on the outcome.

It is still unclear how much these and other criteria – such as the stock marketlevels before the presidential election – can predict who might prevail between Trump and Harris. But he points to Cohen and other academic experts who say polls should be more about figuring out how Americans think than about guessing or making money.

“They can be used to make sense of a prediction, but I’d be leery of weighting too much our sense of what’s going to happen based on the polls,” she said.

“It’s an uncertain and dangerous business when you’re talking about human behavior.”