More Examples Showing How the Polling This Year Has Been All Over the Place

Matt Vespa | October 12, 2020 4:15 PM

Joe Biden is winning, they say. Joe Biden is up seven, eight, twelve points in the polls. Donald Trump is toast, right? No. If anything has taught us, the 2016 election showed that the polling was way off. Gallup was smart and got out of the game for their 2012 flop. Others might be following suit because there is no way to accurately gauge this race. Pollsters are oversampling Democrats. They’re sampling suburban Republicans over rural because the former group is hostile to Trump. They’re avoiding Trump Democrat zip codes. It’s a mess.

Meanwhile, we have reports that yes, there is a shy Trump vote this year. That a sizable portion of voters are straight-up uncomfortable with revealing their true leanings over the phone; they’re rightfully skeptical of being kept anonymous. Some polls are even projecting one million fewer votes from young Americans this cycle. The shy Trump vote is also reportedly bigger than it was in 2016—and urban black women are likely to fall into this category.

Yet, let’s move away from the crosstabs for a second. What the hell is going on here? We have a flurry of polls polling Trump and Biden and it’s a mess. David Chapman, who you should follow, notes the anarchy here.

These Baldwin Wallace University polls are garbage. Why? The poll includes Hawkins in their PA & WI polls, but Hawkins isn't on the ballot in those states. https://t.co/a3ZNd09yQS
— David Chapman (@davidchapman141) October 12, 2020

Global Strategy Group
Biden 52% (+8)
Trump 44%
Among RV conducted Oct. 2-5

The Hill/HarrisX
Biden 45% (+5)
Trump 40%
Among RV conducted Oct. 3-6

Both polls conducted during the same period, they got two very different results.
— David Chapman (@davidchapman141) October 12, 2020

Fox News Poll
Biden 53% (+10)
Trump 43%
Conducted 10/3-10/6

The Hill/HarrisX
Biden 45% (+5)
Trump 40%
Conducted 10/3-10/6

Conducted during the same time. Two different results.
— David Chapman (@davidchapman141) October 12, 2020

Fox News has Biden leading by 10 points, 53-43, yet the Hill-HarrisX poll had Biden leading by only five points. Both were conducted in the same period. Chapman had more examples of the polls being totally different among firms polling this race withing the same time frame. Rasmussen has Biden with a whopping 12-point lead, beating Trump 52-40. The poll was taken between 9/30-10/6. And yet, Innovative Research had Biden only up five points, 47-45.

Remain skeptical. We very well could be wrong here, but that would be the least of our worried with a Biden White House and a rabid, radical, and vindicative Democratic Congress.