Late, very late, Saturday night I get a nervous text from a friend on a thread that generally talks smack about each others’ sports teams:
Jared: “Kev - what do you make of the Iowa poll? Are there chinks we should be worried about?”
Since I had been busy being a dad for most of the day and had been off line, I asked him to let me look into it.
Yep, there it was, the Des Moines Register’s latest cover screaming, “HARRIS LEADS TRUMP - 47-44.”
Of course, the first thing I always do when looking at a poll with an outlier finding is to immediately understand the sampling weight the pollsters used. But since the Register didn’t bother to publish it, I nearly immediately dismissed it. It doesn’t matter if they do a poll and find a certain outcome. If you do a poll that isn’t reflective of the population of likely voters, then the predictive power of said poll is meaningless.
For example, if they had polled 800 inner-city black women exclusively, 47-44 for Harris would be a death sentence for her.
But because my friend Jared had me poking around in the polls, I decided to see by comparison what else had been taken.
It turns out the Register’s poll concluded in October. However, Emerson College has done an updated November poll. Their sampling was all likely voters and people who have voted (85/15 split.) Their sample rate was 36% GOP, 32% Independent, and 31% Democrat — the exact mirror of likely voter registrations for their state.
To no one’s surprise, they found Trump ahead by 53-43.
I sent the info to my friends, which helped them back away from the ledge a bit.
But I wasn’t done.
If you scan Instagram, TikTok, and X, you see both sides working so hard to move the needle. You see posts from black feminists praising Cardi B as being more self-made than Elon Musk. You know, the rest of the universe reminding those feminists that Cardi B literally has bragged about drugging and robbing people to become so self-made. So, I guess I was curious if all these braggy posts were moving any needles, particularly in swing states.
But as I went from state to state, a very clear picture was formed before me.
DONALD TRUMP HAS WON EVERY POLL IN EVERY SWING STATE SINCE NOVEMBER 1.
All of them. In some states, there are multiple polls.
And let me also remind you that in 2016 and 2020, in every one of those states, he trailed in the polling by 4-9 points each versus Clinton and Biden.
In every case, in both of those cycles, he outperformed the polling by 5-8 points.
In the Register poll, a columnist for the paper claimed a tsunami of support caused this sudden jump to Harris because of abortion. Hysterical claims of women abandoning Trump and former GOP voters flocking in droves. (Again, all in a poll we know nothing about in terms of makeup.)
In the Emerson College poll, Trump won Iowa women by 5%. Insert enormous eye-roll, please.
In almost all of the swing state polls, something else is being revealed. Trump has gained enormously in African American votes. Remember, he set new records in 2016 with 8% and in 2020 with 12% amongst black votes nationally.
His lowest turnout thus far in the swing states was 19% in North Carolina. But in Michigan and Nevada, he is recording 39% and 33%, respectively. In fact, in Michigan, Kamala Harris is currently getting/polling only 54% of African American votes. Democrats traditionally need 90% or more to win.
In the other interesting category of stealing voters from the previous cycle, Trump is taking 8% of Biden’s voters from 2020. Harris is only scoring 4.1% of Trump’s voters from the last go-round.
In multiple states, he’s also outright winning the female vote from 4-7%. (Again, these are in polls where up to 15-20% of respondents have already voted.)
If these trends continue, he will win every swing state.
If these trends replicate nationwide, look for New Hampshire and Virginia to be in serious play by Tuesday.
But more than anything else, if you love your country, it is imperative that you vote. Because the only polls that matter are the ones that begin totaling up at 8 EST this Tuesday night.