Too Early to Call.Polls shift from week to week in the ever-changing presidential election by Mary Kate Cary ( republished with permission of the author and US News and World Report)
Last week in this space, my colleague and friend Robert Schlesinger wrote about six factors to watch in the race between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. Since Robert wrote his column, many of those factors have changed. Let me point out a few I've noticed:
Poll position. Like many on the left, Robert wants us all to believe that Clinton's basically got this in the bag. "By and large she has maintained a clear lead over Trump in the polls," he writes, and has done so in enough states to put her over the 270 electoral-vote mark. Not so fast, my friend. She hasn't won it yet.
Just since last week, the polls have started moving. The Washington Post's mammoth 50-state poll that came out over Labor Day had a number of surprises in it: in a head-to-head matchup, Clinton leads by four points or more in 20 states and D.C., for a total of 244 electoral votes. According to the Post, Trump leads by four points in 20 states as well, which only add up to 126 electoral votes. The remaining ten states – which hold 168 electoral votes – are a tossup. Robert points to other news outlets such as NBC which put Clinton over the 270 mark, but it's far from unanimous. What's surprising is how many tossup states are in play. The Post reports Trump has a small lead in Iowa and Ohio, and is close in normally blue Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania.
Another big surprise: traditionally Republican Texas is in a dead heat, and Florida, Arizona and Georgia are close. But as fivethirtyeight.com's Nate Silver points out, "Trump is more likely to win the Electoral College while losing the popular vote than the other way around. Some of this is for a quirky reason: Trump is underperforming recent Republican nominees in polls of deeply red states." Silver's observation: If Clinton lost traditional Republican states by say, 10 points instead of 20, that might help her win a bigger share of the popular vote, but won't help her in the Electoral College.
Over Labor Day weekend, the L.A. Times put the two nominees in a tie, and the CNN/ORC poll had Trump up by one point – and winning independents by a whopping 20 points. Clinton's lead in the RealClearPolitics average has shrunk from eight to ten points after the Democratic convention to just three, and she remains below 50 percent.
And of course there's this from last week: the stunning 2-to-1 margin by which likely Nevada voters prefer an "arrogant ass" over an "unrepentant criminal," and a "loud-mouth jerk" over a "habitual liar." Wow.
Robert makes a good point that both campaigns are running out of time, since early voting is about to start in a number of states. As long as Clinton's email problems stay front and center – every day seems to bring a new revelation – I'm not sure I'd want early voting to start now if I were her. And although Robert cites a recent Quinnipiac poll showing 90 percent of voters have made up their minds, that's not my sense of things. Nate Silver reports the degree of uncertainty is "higher than people might assume," at 20 percent of the electorate, compared to 5 to 10 percent at this point four years ago. It still feels to me like there are a lot of voters waiting to see how the debates go. I'd be willing to bet these will be some of the most-watched debates in history. All Trump has to do is appear to be a somewhat credible alternative to her, and he may pick up those undecideds.
Trump: The Pivot. Robert says there is "abundant evidence" that Trump does not have the self-discipline necessary to pivot to a general election campaign. In one of the most interesting focus groups I've seen, last week pollster Frank Luntz interviewed 24 Pennsylvania voters who were previously for Trump. By the end of the conversation, 15 out of 24 of them said he would "win the election if he gets himself under control." That says to me that they're not quitting him yet.
I'll agree Clinton clearly has an advantage over Trump in terms of state offices, ground organization, television ads and the like, all of which made the difference in previous elections. Robert might want to ask Ted Cruz what his impressive ground game has done for him lately. Same with television ads – ask Jeb Bush what over $100 million in television advertising did for him this cycle. Traditional TV ads this year are not having the same effect they've had in the past. Exhibit A: Clinton is outspending Trump by 5-to-1 on television ads in the two biggest advertising markets in the U.S. – Orlando and Tampa – yet she remains statistically tied in Florida in the Post's 50-state poll. Instead, 2016 voters are turning to social media to get their political news, increasingly on a mobile device. The Trump campaign has made up for its lack of ground operations by using social media very effectively. None of the "rules" from previous elections seem to hold any longer.
Trump on the Hill. "The extent to which there is a Trump drag remains unclear," Robert writes about down-ballot races. But just after Labor Day, Politico's headline read, "GOP: Trump Won't Cost Us Congress." My sense is that there will likely be a lot of ticket-splitting by voters. One thing to note: there haven't been any big primary upsets this cycle – no Eric Cantor-type surprises. Both Paul Ryan and John McCain were supposedly in late-summer "tough" primaries, and both won easily.
The enthusiasm gap. Robert talks about the lower number of Republicans who support Trump than Democrats who support Clinton, but that's changing as well. The CNN/ORC poll says 92 percent of Democrats back Clinton, and 90 percent of Republicans now back Trump, the same number who supported Romney. According to CNN, the lack of enthusiasm is across the board: 46 percent say they are extremely or very enthusiastic, compared with 57 percent at this point in 2012. However, "the lack of enthusiasm spikes among Clinton supporters," reports CNN. "A majority of Clinton's supporters say they're less excited about voting this year than usual (55 percent) while most of Trump's backers say they're more excited this time around (56 percent)." Again, the political sands seem to be shifting.
RATs – or Republicans Against Trump. There's been a lot of talk about members of the GOP who either oppose Trump or have endorsed Clinton. Let's talk about Democrats who are uncomfortable with Clinton, some of whom are die-hard Sanders supporters. Clinton supporters have been dismissive about her email scandal, but the pay-for-play allegations at the Clinton Foundation are a different animal. Even Clinton boosters see the problem when they hear that Bill Clinton received $18 million for serving as the "honorary chancellor" of a for-profit college while his wife was secretary of state. Or that more than half of the people outside of the government who met with Secretary Clinton gave money to the Clinton Foundation. No wonder former DNC chairman and Gov. Ed Rendell called for her to shut down the Clinton Foundation if she is elected. The New York Times editorial board said she shouldn't even wait for the election to cut ties with it. I'd say if you're the Democratic nominee and you've lost The New York Times editorial board, you've got a problem.
The other shoe. Robert and I agree that it's only a matter of time before another shoe drops and more emails come to light. We know the Russians have hacked the Clinton Foundation, the Clinton campaign and the DNC. Julian Assange announced after Labor Day that he may release the batch he's got as soon as next week. Fasten your seatbelt.
Regular readers know that I'm no Trump supporter. But Clinton fans should remember the words of the great American statesman Yogi Berra: It ain't over 'till it's over.
Mary Kate Cary CONTRIBUTING EDITOR
Mary Kate Cary is a former White House speechwriter for President George H.W. Bush. She currently writes speeches for political and business leaders, and is a contributing editor for U.S. News & World Report.
Too Early to Call.Polls shift from week to week in the ever-changing presidential election by Mary Kate Cary ( republished with permission of the author and US News and World Report)
Last week in this space, my colleague and friend Robert Schlesinger wrote about six factors to watch in the race between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. Since Robert wrote his column, many of those factors have changed. Let me point out a few I've noticed:
Poll position. Like many on the left, Robert wants us all to believe that Clinton's basically got this in the bag. "By and large she has maintained a clear lead over Trump in the polls," he writes, and has done so in enough states to put her over the 270 electoral-vote mark. Not so fast, my friend. She hasn't won it yet.
Just since last week, the polls have started moving. The Washington Post's mammoth 50-state poll that came out over Labor Day had a number of surprises in it: in a head-to-head matchup, Clinton leads by four points or more in 20 states and D.C., for a total of 244 electoral votes. According to the Post, Trump leads by four points in 20 states as well, which only add up to 126 electoral votes. The remaining ten states – which hold 168 electoral votes – are a tossup. Robert points to other news outlets such as NBC which put Clinton over the 270 mark, but it's far from unanimous. What's surprising is how many tossup states are in play. The Post reports Trump has a small lead in Iowa and Ohio, and is close in normally blue Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania.
Another big surprise: traditionally Republican Texas is in a dead heat, and Florida, Arizona and Georgia are close. But as fivethirtyeight.com's Nate Silver points out, "Trump is more likely to win the Electoral College while losing the popular vote than the other way around. Some of this is for a quirky reason: Trump is underperforming recent Republican nominees in polls of deeply red states." Silver's observation: If Clinton lost traditional Republican states by say, 10 points instead of 20, that might help her win a bigger share of the popular vote, but won't help her in the Electoral College.
Over Labor Day weekend, the L.A. Times put the two nominees in a tie, and the CNN/ORC poll had Trump up by one point – and winning independents by a whopping 20 points. Clinton's lead in the RealClearPolitics average has shrunk from eight to ten points after the Democratic convention to just three, and she remains below 50 percent.
And of course there's this from last week: the stunning 2-to-1 margin by which likely Nevada voters prefer an "arrogant ass" over an "unrepentant criminal," and a "loud-mouth jerk" over a "habitual liar." Wow.
Robert makes a good point that both campaigns are running out of time, since early voting is about to start in a number of states. As long as Clinton's email problems stay front and center – every day seems to bring a new revelation – I'm not sure I'd want early voting to start now if I were her. And although Robert cites a recent Quinnipiac poll showing 90 percent of voters have made up their minds, that's not my sense of things. Nate Silver reports the degree of uncertainty is "higher than people might assume," at 20 percent of the electorate, compared to 5 to 10 percent at this point four years ago. It still feels to me like there are a lot of voters waiting to see how the debates go. I'd be willing to bet these will be some of the most-watched debates in history. All Trump has to do is appear to be a somewhat credible alternative to her, and he may pick up those undecideds.
Trump: The Pivot. Robert says there is "abundant evidence" that Trump does not have the self-discipline necessary to pivot to a general election campaign. In one of the most interesting focus groups I've seen, last week pollster Frank Luntz interviewed 24 Pennsylvania voters who were previously for Trump. By the end of the conversation, 15 out of 24 of them said he would "win the election if he gets himself under control." That says to me that they're not quitting him yet.
I'll agree Clinton clearly has an advantage over Trump in terms of state offices, ground organization, television ads and the like, all of which made the difference in previous elections. Robert might want to ask Ted Cruz what his impressive ground game has done for him lately. Same with television ads – ask Jeb Bush what over $100 million in television advertising did for him this cycle. Traditional TV ads this year are not having the same effect they've had in the past. Exhibit A: Clinton is outspending Trump by 5-to-1 on television ads in the two biggest advertising markets in the U.S. – Orlando and Tampa – yet she remains statistically tied in Florida in the Post's 50-state poll. Instead, 2016 voters are turning to social media to get their political news, increasingly on a mobile device. The Trump campaign has made up for its lack of ground operations by using social media very effectively. None of the "rules" from previous elections seem to hold any longer.
Trump on the Hill. "The extent to which there is a Trump drag remains unclear," Robert writes about down-ballot races. But just after Labor Day, Politico's headline read, "GOP: Trump Won't Cost Us Congress." My sense is that there will likely be a lot of ticket-splitting by voters. One thing to note: there haven't been any big primary upsets this cycle – no Eric Cantor-type surprises. Both Paul Ryan and John McCain were supposedly in late-summer "tough" primaries, and both won easily.
The enthusiasm gap. Robert talks about the lower number of Republicans who support Trump than Democrats who support Clinton, but that's changing as well. The CNN/ORC poll says 92 percent of Democrats back Clinton, and 90 percent of Republicans now back Trump, the same number who supported Romney. According to CNN, the lack of enthusiasm is across the board: 46 percent say they are extremely or very enthusiastic, compared with 57 percent at this point in 2012. However, "the lack of enthusiasm spikes among Clinton supporters," reports CNN. "A majority of Clinton's supporters say they're less excited about voting this year than usual (55 percent) while most of Trump's backers say they're more excited this time around (56 percent)." Again, the political sands seem to be shifting.
RATs – or Republicans Against Trump. There's been a lot of talk about members of the GOP who either oppose Trump or have endorsed Clinton. Let's talk about Democrats who are uncomfortable with Clinton, some of whom are die-hard Sanders supporters. Clinton supporters have been dismissive about her email scandal, but the pay-for-play allegations at the Clinton Foundation are a different animal. Even Clinton boosters see the problem when they hear that Bill Clinton received $18 million for serving as the "honorary chancellor" of a for-profit college while his wife was secretary of state. Or that more than half of the people outside of the government who met with Secretary Clinton gave money to the Clinton Foundation. No wonder former DNC chairman and Gov. Ed Rendell called for her to shut down the Clinton Foundation if she is elected. The New York Times editorial board said she shouldn't even wait for the election to cut ties with it. I'd say if you're the Democratic nominee and you've lost The New York Times editorial board, you've got a problem.
The other shoe. Robert and I agree that it's only a matter of time before another shoe drops and more emails come to light. We know the Russians have hacked the Clinton Foundation, the Clinton campaign and the DNC. Julian Assange announced after Labor Day that he may release the batch he's got as soon as next week. Fasten your seatbelt.
Regular readers know that I'm no Trump supporter. But Clinton fans should remember the words of the great American statesman Yogi Berra: It ain't over 'till it's over.
Mary Kate Cary CONTRIBUTING EDITOR
Mary Kate Cary is a former White House speechwriter for President George H.W. Bush. She currently writes speeches for political and business leaders, and is a contributing editor for U.S. News & World Report.
- Beware of polls tagged “bombshells” or “stunners.” Any poll described thusly is likely to be an outlier, and outlier polls are usually wrong. Remember those American Research Group polls that had Republican John Kasich climbing rapidly in primary after primary? They were pretty much all wrong; stunners usually are. That said, sometimes they’re right, such as the Des Moines Register poll that projected a large Joni Ernst victory in the 2014 Iowa Senate race, when other polls showed a tighter race. So don’t dismiss outliers, either.
- Instead, take an average. I don’t just say this because it’s what we do at FiveThirtyEight. I say it because aggregating polls, especially in general elections, is the method that leads to the most accurate projection of the eventual result most often. Put simply, it’s the best measure of the state of the race.
- Look for polls that use live interviewers; they have a better track record.Polls that use real, live humans to call people up and ask them what they think are more tested have a better record than interactive voice response (“robopolls”) or online polls. Pollsters that use live interviewers can more easily reach a representative sample, while convenience online surveysand especially interactive voice response polls have trouble contacting some demographic groups — young people and nonwhite respondents, for example.
- Know the polling firm – some are waaay better than others. There’s a ton of pollsters. Many are staffed with really smart people who put a lot of thought and resources into producing top-quality surveys. Some are not. Some produce fake polls. If you’ve never heard of the polling firm, be suspicious. When in doubt, check our pollster ratings to be sure.
- Beware the unskewers. It’s easy to find fault with a poll, even from the best pollsters. Anyone passionately arguing that a poll is wrong because its sample has “too many [xx]” or “too many of this group are voting for [xx]” is probably wrong. As you dig into a survey’s crosstabs — looking at college-educated white men, for example, or Hispanics 65 years or older — you’re sacrificing sample size for specificity. The margins of error of subsamples can get huge. Further, most pollsters weight their results by demographics (such as age and race) and not attitudes (like party identification). They do so because historically this has produced the most accurate result. Picking apart individual polls is usually a bad use of time, and the people doing it tend to have a motive.
- Check what the pollster said previously. Some pollsters’ results lean more towards one party or the other. Sometimes the race will seem as if it’s shifting simply because a group of pollsters with a Clinton-leaning “house effect” — they tend to produce better numbers for Clinton — release their results one week and a group of Trump-leaning pollsters the next. So, comparing polls between different pollsters can get tricky. Instead, when Acme Polling releases a survey showing Trump ahead by 4 points in Ohio, check what the previous Acme poll of Ohio said — that’ll give you a better sense of whether there has truly been movement in the race. (FiveThirtyEight’s forecast models do just this.)
- Consider the motives of the media reporting on the polls. Conservative and liberal media outlets are more likely to report on polls more favorable to their candidates or portray outlier polls as the true state of the race. And even nonpartisan media outlets know that “New Poll Shows Race Hasn’t Changed” isn’t a great headline. Additionally, a media company that sponsors a poll is probably going to want to hype up their own findings.
- Check to see if the poll includes third-party candidates. Normally, whether a poll includes independent candidates doesn’t have too much effect on the margin separating the two major-party candidates. This year, however, surveys that include the Libertarian Party’s nominee, Gary Johnson, and the Green Party’s, Jill Stein, have shown a closer race than two-way matchup polls. Pollsters, at the least, should be including Johnson — he’s probably going to be on the ballot in all 50 states, and he’s polling in the high single digits. Moreover, Johnson does not seem to be fading in the polls as many past third-party candidates have.
- Margin of error and sample size matter less than who’s in the sample, though be wary if the sample size is smaller than 400. One key to accurate election polling is correctly projecting who will vote. Calling harder to reach people (like young voters) costs a lot of money, so pollsters who want to properly poll these groups often have smaller sample sizes. Meanwhile, having a larger sample size often doesn’t shrink the margin of error that much. A national poll with a sample size of 400 has a margin of error of +/- 4.9 percentage points, while one with a sample size of 800 has a margin of error of +/- 3.5 percentage points. That said, the margin of error rapidly increases as you drop below 400 respondents.
- Don’t get crazy about the Electoral College. If either Clinton or Trump is ahead in the popular vote, then they will most likely win the Electoral College, especially if they’re winning by more than a few percentage points. That’s been almost universally true throughout American history, with only a couple of exceptions in super close elections. (That’s one reason it’s silly to dismiss national polls.)
- Still, aggregating the state polls usually provides a better idea of who is going to win than the national polls. If the election is close, we need to know who is winning in the swing states. But even if the election isn’t close, history shows that aggregating the state polls (weighted by population) has more often than not produced a more accurate projection of the national popular vote than the national polls.
- If the polls shift after the debates … wait. Short-term shifts in polls often reverse themselves. Debates are among the final events on every modern election calendar that can have a big effect on the polls. There’s an argument to be made that Ronald Reagan’s strong debate performance in 1980 shifted the polls in his direction in the final week of the campaign. But in 2012, Mitt Romney rose in the polls after the first debate only to lose most of those gains before Election Day. Better to wait and see if any change lasts.
- Even at the end of the campaign, the polls probably won’t perfectly predict the results. Polls get more accurate as Election Day approaches, but even on the eve of voting they’re not perfect. Everyone talks about the margin of sampling error — the error introduced by not surveying every voter. But polls are also subject to all kinds of other errors, none of which disappear as we get closer to the election. The average presidential poll within the final 21 days of the election has been off by 3.6 percentage points since 2000.
