Tipsheet

National and Battleground Polls: Final 2024 Analysis

Guy Benson
Guy Benson  |  November 04, 2024 2:01 PM

Three scenarios for tomorrow: (1) As we've seen in the past, the polling fails to correctly measure Trump's support, which ends up surpassing what the data projects for him.  Under this circumstance, he almost certainly wins.  A pro-Trump polling miss of just a few points in the battlegrounds could result in a swing state sweep and a decisive victory.  (2) Pollsters have over-corrected for their 2016 and 2020 errors, thus over-estimating Trump's support.  Democratic turnout is stronger than some of the early voting patterns indicate, Independents break for Harris in significant numbers, and/or there are far more GOP defections from Trump that polling has indicated.  Harris wins.  As we noted earlier, if the Iowa/Selzer poll ends up looking more like a coal mine canary than a bad misfire, she wins big. (3) The polling averages are more or less correct this cycle, overall, teeing up a white-knuckle election that comes down to the wire.  If things are breaking bad for either candidate, we may have some pretty strong indications of how things will end up fairly early on.  But if early bellwethers are extremely tight, we could be in for a long night -- or even a series of days.

Nate Silver's model has bounced around a bit over the final months of this campaign.  Over recent months, each candidate has led in the predictive algorithm, with Trump's modest lead dwindling down to basically a pure coin flip.  The RealClearPolitics national polling average is almost exactly tied (there are straggler polls still arriving, but the statistical shouting is almost over). Considering that Trump trailed by more than three points going into Election Day 2016, and won that election -- then lost a close one in 2020, despite his actual defeat margin being considerably smaller than Biden's final 7.2 percentage point average lead -- Trump being tied or even ahead by a hair is obviously an improvement.  Does that seep into the swing states?  Maybe.  Trump holds extremely thin leads in Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, North Carolina and Pennsylvania.  Harris is up by less than half-a-percentage point in Michigan and Wisconsin.  Given the jarring polling misses in those latter two states over the past two cycles, that's not exactly a comforting picture for Democrats.  But the notion that Republicans should be comfortably confident, or over-confident, is also absurd.  Tiny shifts and minor factors could conceivably tip this race one way or the other.

Republicans appear to be doing historically well in a number of key states, in terms of the early vote.  They outpaced Democrats in North Carolina for the first time ever.  They've amassed a large head-to-head partisan lead in Arizona.  Their Nevada showing has also been impressive, driven by explosive rural turnout.  The rural are also showing up in force for Team Red in Georgia.  There are strong indicators in Wisconsin, too.  Democrats still have an advantage in Pennsylvania, but a seriously diminished one, compared to 2020.  As we've cautioned before, however, 2020 is an anomalous baseline year in multiple ways, so those comparisons can be tricky.  If you only showed me the polling averages and the early vote data, I'd probably predict that Trump takes the election.  But why are some expectations seeming to shift in the opposite direction at the eleventh hour? The aforementioned Iowa Selzer poll was a shocker, and given that outfit's reputation, it's causing people to wonder if a whole lot of the polling will look way off, this time to Democrats' benefit.  There's also the (likely correct) perception that Democrats' ground game is superior, as well as a batch of final New York Times polls showing the race moving Harris' way at the very end:


Interestingly, though, the Times' top data guru has issued a warning about their process, transparently admitting that there's a reasonable chance the ingredients are once again in place for another polling miss:


Here is the Trump campaign's memo on the Times surveys, noting the inaccuracies of 2020, and calling out what they see as unrealistic numbers in the data.  Time will tell.  Meanwhile, the final battleground numbers from Republican-leaning pollsters project a clear-cut Trump victory (Atlas, for what it's worth, was the most accurate predictor of the national popular vote four years ago, whether through skill or luck):

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Unlike those organizations, Morning Consult has been quite Democrat-friendly all cycle, yet their final numbers would point to a probable Trump win, if accurate:


YouGov's big final poll of battlegrounds (registered voters), by contrast, is even more favorable to Harris than the NYT/Siena data.  As briefly discussed above, I believe the conditions for a Harris win are some combination of the following: (a) Greater-than-expected Republican peel-off from Trump, (b) better-than-expected Democratic turnout, making up for EV erosion among black voters, on Election Day, (c) worse-than-anticipated Republican turnout tomorrow, compared to previous cycles, and (d) independents really going blue.  The Times appears to show indies and late deciders breaking for Harris.  This national poll from Emerson, however, gives Trump a six-point lead among independents, with an exactly tied top line:


Meanwhile, NBC and TIPP's final national polls give Trump a single-point lead:

If NBC is right, Trump trails nationally by seven points in the early vote, but 'should' win Election Day by 16 points.  That only happens if Republican voters show up in force tomorrow.  We're seeing a bunch of other virtual ties across multiple other national surveys to close out the cycle.  As I've alluded to above, if I felt confident in my read on the data, I'd be leaning Trump right now.  But I'm genuinely not sure what to believe.  We have known unknowns, as always, but are there seemingly 'known-knowns' that will be unexpectedly upended tomorrow?  The GOP has lost or underperformed in every major election since 2016, including in 2022, when the 'fundamentals' should have favored them pretty heavily.  With too many lingering doubts, I will eschew an official prediction this year -- though my lukewarm take is that the election will break relatively clearly one way or the other, and it won't take multiple days to resolve.  Perhaps that's wishful thinking, in addition to a hunch.  If you're a glutton for punishment, listen to Ben Shapiro's entirely plausible worst-case scenario for the evening.  Absent a really horrible night for Republicans, they should win at least a simple majority of the Senate, with a far better night landing them in the ballpark of 54 seats.  The House is so closely divided, with so few truly contested races, that it's a good bet that whichever party wins the presidency will also control Congress' lower chamber in 2025.  Here's an interesting summary of the upsides and concerns for each party heading into tomorrow, via a GOP-aligned pollster:

Tallying up the things Republicans should be feeling good about & nervous about. Flip this if you’re a Democrat.

FEELING GOOD
- Trump will likely get the electorate he needs.
- Electorate will be 1-2 points right of 2020 in most states.
- It’s a change election and Trump is winning on the top issues.
- Signs of a third Rust Belt polling error are there
- Ultimately, she needs more to go right than he does.

NERVOUS
- NYT finding late deciders breaking for Harris
- R / Indy crossover
- Rust Belt proving a stubbornly hard nut to crack, with fewer Trump shifting demos, & softness underscored by the Selzer poll.

I'll leave you with a simple message: If you haven't already, vote.