Official Election Poll Thread: Part 6

Part 7.

I maybe extremely naive, but I just don't see how Trump has increased his base to surpass his 2020 numbers, which weren't enough. In fact, it seems just the opposite when you have major Republicans being vocal and vehement about not supporting him. They have given license to a lot of folks to vote against their party's nominee.

In fact, I don't know why the Democrats haven't seized upon this idea that this is not an election of Democrats vs. Republicans, but Americans vs. Extremist.

Most recent thread.

This is short enough to redo with the Part 7 in the headline

^ Done.

Silver: The other thing is that the conventional wisdom tends to exaggerate even small polling swings — we went from 55-45 in Harris’s direction to 55-45 for Trump, and people are treating it as though we’ve gone from likely Harris to Trump being a sure thing. The narrative about Trump having momentum was sort of vaguely, loosely true — he’s in a better position than immediately after the debate, for instance — but also grossly exaggerated. Still, Democrats aren’t used to this. In 2008, 2012, 2016 and 2020, they went into Election Day as the clear favorite — wrongly in 2016, of course.

Bruni: I know you two focus on numbers, evidence, what’s measurable, but please tap your wealth of political experience, from close observation over so many years: What one factor, among the many factors in the foreground of this race, do you think could turn out to be much more consequential than we’ve imagined? Venture a best guess, an informed hypothesis. This will be my personal tie therapy from you.

Silver: Well, it’s Trump who’s relying more on marginal, unlikely voters, while Democrats do well with the upscale suburbanites. Those voters can be hard to capture in polls.

Anderson: When the polls have missed in the last few elections, the consensus is that it is because of polls missing some kind of unlikely voter. In 2012, this was a driver of some pollsters’ overestimation of Mitt Romney’s chances. In 2016 and 2020, it was Trump’s unlikely voters who were missed.

Silver: They also might not show up, especially sort of the Theo Von-Joe Rogan younger male demographic. And Harris should have the better ground game, with Trump sort of having turned his over to Elon Musk. It’s probably the difference of at most half a percentage point, but the election could come down to that.

Anderson: When pollsters make decisions about their samples and what weights to apply, they are making an educated guess about what turnout will look like, but it is just that — an educated guess.

Anderson: When pollsters make decisions about their samples and what weights to apply, they are making an educated guess about what turnout will look like, but it is just that — an educated guess.

Bruni: That damned escalator — I’ve never had such issues with a device for human transport.

Silver: He was president before, and although 2020 was pretty hellacious with the pandemic and then widespread social unrest, including Jan. 6, people don’t seem to pin the blame on him — they sort of conflate the timeline and associate Biden with the lockdowns.

Anderson: When Trump left office, Gallup found him leaving with a 34 percent job approval — just abysmal. The disgust with Jan. 6 had left an awful taste in people’s mouths. But then when NBC asked people just a few weeks ago, the retrospective job approval of Trump was 48 percent.

Silver: When Biden-Harris say democracy is under threat, I absolutely agree with them. But they’re in the White House right now and Democrats control the Senate and many of the important swing-state governorships. So this is a tougher and more counterintuitive sell for Harris than it seems.

Anderson: The reality is that America was ready to turn the page from Trump in the last election, thinking that with Joe Biden they would get some kind of calm and normalcy and adults in the room. When that didn’t materialize as they’d hoped, suddenly Trump started looking more appealing again by comparison. That’s how you get someone with all of Trump’s controversies, dark rhetoric and baggage to still have 48 percent retrospective job approval.

R6 Is this "Anderson" Cooper?