As useful as they can be, political polls are often only reflective of the people that were surveyed for them. But when a large number of polls are considered together, it can paint a much more accurate picture.
So far, that picture isn’t pretty for Vice President Kamala Harris, who is losing ground to Former President Donald Trump in most national polls.
Based on the total aggregation of polling data he’s seen between Harris and former Trump, Dustin Olson, a managing partner with the Republican polling firm American Pulse, said that with about three weeks left before the Nov. 5 general election, he’s starting to feel confident Trump is going to win the presidential race.
“At this point it’s starting to become Trump’s winning this election,” Olson said. “It’s starting to get further and further away from Harris.”
Olson, who’s conducted polling in Wyoming in the past, said the race seems close enough that recounts could play a factor in the final result.
Olson offers a few reasons for why the polls show an advantage for Trump.
There are a few consistencies that can be drawn from nearly all of the thousands of polls being conducted now for the presidential race, one being that Trump almost universally has the momentum, he said.
Harris enjoyed a large bump in the polls after she entered the race in July, but that lead has slowly shrunk since, failing to meaningfully build off her debate with Trump in September or the Democratic National Convention in August, Olson said.
Harris also didn’t benefit from the vice presidential-nominee and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz’s debate performance, and she caught some heat for an interview she did on the CBS TV show “60 Minutes.” On Monday, she caught many by surprise when it was announced she’ll sit for an interview with Fox News.
Conversely, the issues seemingly working against Trump in the last year haven’t impacted his popularity, which is now higher than it was in 2020 and 2016.
“That to me is pretty amazing considering everything that has happened in the media,” Olson said. “It’s amazing to think that he’s actually improved that. He just seems to have a better ability to adapt and move numbers.”
Olson believes the numbers have gotten so bad for Harris that there may be conversations soon, and particularly if she loses, about whether Biden would have performed better had he stayed in the race.
“Joe Biden is a guy you should’ve never counted out, in my opinion,” Olson said. “I think it was a mistake for them to have swapped them out.”
Closing In
Trump has chipped away at a small lead Harris has had in several battleground states, with the two candidates now essentially tied across the battlegrounds. They are separated by less than a percentage point in five of the seven states that are expected to swing the election.
Wyoming is not considered a battleground state and is expected to heavily support Trump as it did in 2016 and 2020.
Ultimately, the race is neck-and-neck based on the polls, but Olson said he would much rather have Trump’s numbers considering the former president’s history of performing better in the actual elections than polling numbers had suggested.
“If I were Harris, I’d be very concerned about the numbers,” Olson said. “All in all, the race is shifting and you’d rather have Trump’s numbers than Harris’ numbers.”
One of the most damning polls for Harris released by Quinnipiac University last week showed her trailing Trump in the key battleground states of Michigan and Wisconsin by 3 and 2 percentage points respectively. This poll still had her holding on to a 3 percentage point lead in Pennsylvania.
NBC News found the race tied, down from a 5-point lead for Harris a few weeks ago, while she led by two points in the ABC News poll, a drop from 6 points in its last measure.
Although most of the national focus is dialed in on the Midwestern battlegrounds, Olson said the Sun Belt states may prove to be the actual deciding factor in the election due to Trump’s recent success in the Midwest.
Although Trump was previously doing better in the Sun Belt states of North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona and Nevada, Harris has chipped away at his lead in the region.
Olson said an unexpected scenario could also play out where Trump wins the key Midwestern states but loses the Sunbelts, causing him to lose the election.
If Close, Why Does That Favor Trump?
In most of the polls, Harris leads by a small margin on a national level.
Over the last two presidential elections, polling has predicted the Democratic candidate to win by fairly comfortable margins more generous than the final result.
A factor that could play into that is people with postgraduate degrees are much more likely to participate in polls than other people. This demographic tends to overwhelmingly oppose Trump.
But that’s not to say the polls always lean in favor of Democrats. In the lead up to the 2022 midterm elections, conservative polling data suggested a tidal wave of Republican success would mark the congressional races across the country. What happened was much more of a red ripple, as Republicans only showed modest success.
Olson also said there are a significant number of online polls using shoddy methodology to draw their results, as well as polls that are too reliant on political party identification, which is a particularly flawed parameter in the blue-collar states of Wisconsin and Michigan.
The majority of private internal polling he’s seen favors Trump.
Also, if the polling data is as skewed to the Democrats as it was in 2016 and 2020 for the November election, Olson said Trump has a chance of winning the popular vote, which would statistically guarantee him a win if that happens.
Past Comparisons
When comparing Harris’ polling numbers to previous Democratic candidates at this stage in the race, she’s also not doing well.
At this stage of the race in 2020, now-President Joe Biden was winning by 10 percentage points, according to RealClearPolitics data.
Biden won that race, but ultimately by a much slimmer margin, as less than 50,000 people across three states swung the balance.
Even 2016 Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton was doing better than Harris is now, polling at around a 6% lead over Trump at this point in the race, according to RealClearPolitics. Trump ended up winning the election by a relatively comfortable margin.
Harris is now polling about 4% behind Clinton and 8% behind Biden.
The last election featuring polling this close may have been 2004, when then-President George W. Bush beat Democratic challenger John Kerry by a somewhat comfortable margin.
But Olson said this election reminds him most of the presidential elections of 2016, 1980 and 1984, the latter two former President Ronald Reagan won by a landslide.
Leo Wolfson can be reached at leo@cowboystatedaily.com.
