by Brian C. Joondeph, American Thinker:
What do the polls of elections past tell us about the current presidential race?
Borrowing from Charles Dickens’s classic “A Christmas Carol,” miserly Ebenezer Scrooge is visited by ghosts from Christmas past, present, and future, converting him into a kinder and gentler soul.
Political polling also creates scrooges, especially when we see our preferred candidate losing in the polls, or our disliked candidate given a false boost due to the polling sample composition and spin.
The ghost of election present is today, the first week or two of October, less than a month until election day. The Real Clear Politics average shows Harris up 1.8 points over Trump, with only Rasmussen Reports giving Trump a 2-point lead.
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Remember that with the Electoral College, the presidential race is actually 50 state races, but still the national polls are a good barometer of voter sentiment. So is crowd size at campaign rallies including Trump’s Lazarus return-from-the-dead moment last week in Butler, PA. Trump’s campaign estimates over 105,000 rally attendees.
In Aurora, Colorado, a few days ago, Trump’s rally venue held 10,000 with some multiple of that watching from outside.
We haven’t met the ghost of election future. If we had, many of us would sleep better at night or else make sure our passports are up to date, ready to move to a less dystopian country, if any still exist.
As a simple exercise, let’s look at presidential polls from 2016 — Donald Trump vs. Hillary Clinton; 2020 — Trump versus Joe Biden; and 2024 – Trump versus Kamala Harris.
We can review popular polling organizations that were active in all three elections and look at the same point in time, early October, less than a month until the election.
Here are the specific polls:
For 2024. Quinnipiac (9/19 – 9/22) shows a tie. Reuters/Ipsos (10/4 – 10/7) shows Harris +2. CNN (9/19 – 9/22) has Harris +1. Fox News (9/13 – 9/16) shows Harris +2. On average, it’s Harris +1.
Now look at the same polls eight years ago. The dates don’t match exactly as the polls are not commissioned on identical dates each election cycle but are all in the same general time frame of early October.
For 2016. Quinnipiac (10/5 – 10/6) showed Clinton +6. Reuters/Ipsos (10/6 – 10/10) had Clinton +7. CNN (9/28 – 10/2) also showed Clinton +6. Fox News (10/10 – 10/12) had Clinton +8. The average of these four polls gave Clinton a 7-point national lead over Trump.
In other words, Clinton had a bigger edge over Trump compared to Harris over Trump, and Clinton lost the election.
Now for 2020. Quinnipiac (10/16 – 10/19) had Biden +10. Reuters/Ipsos (10/9 – 10/13) showed Biden +10. CNN (10/1 – 10/4) had Biden +16. Fox News (10/3 – 10/6) showed Biden +10. On average, these polls called Biden +12.
Biden went on to win, although with a very small margin based on a handful of battleground states. NPR said of the close election, “Just 44,000 votes in Georgia, Arizona, and Wisconsin separated Biden and Trump from a tie in the Electoral College.”
Averaging the four polls noted above for early October, Clinton was +7, Biden was +12, and Harris is currently only +1.
If both Clinton and Biden had big polling leads in early October and the final margins were very narrow, Harris at the same point in time, with smaller polling margins, is likely to lose.
These comparative margins suggest the Democrat candidate will perform 8 to 10 points lower than the polls today indicate. If Harris today only polls 1 point better than Trump, she will likely lose the general election.
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