I live for the polls. I have one piece of advice for the coming weeks. “Please stop.”

It’s not that the polls are broken. Despite many criticisms, the survey continues to provide surprisingly accurate results and important insights into what different voter groups are thinking.

But most people who obsessively click on the latest latest survey aren’t looking for that. What they want to know — and you probably want to know if you’re reading this — is the one answer that a close poll can’t provide: Who will win?

Democratic Party’s anxiety goes out of control

For the past week, it seems like Democrats have been making a fuss from country to country over Vice President Kamala Harris’ chances in the presidential race.

This shift in mood says more about public sentiment than opinion polls. of Opinion polls, on average, barely movingBut in the final stretch, Democrats appear to be just as anxious as Republicans are leaning toward overconfidence.

Check reality. Over the past 14 presidential elections, national polls have averaged a difference of 2.2 percentage points. (Harry Enten of the polling company FiveThirtyEight.com at the time, The average value was calculated for the first time in 2016.. )

That’s not bad. best professional basketball players 10% if you miss a free throw at the time. Olympic Shooter removes center ring in similar proportions. In a country as diverse as the United States, it’s pretty surprising to see margins of just a few percentage points in repeated elections, and there’s no evidence that polls are becoming less accurate. For example, the average number of electoral losses in 1996 and 2000 was higher than in any election since then.

Of course the problem is slight margin Separating Harris from former President Trump main condition. The average voting error is much larger than the superiority or inferiority of either candidate. And this situation is unlikely to change in the final two-and-a-half weeks, given that so few voters have yet to make a decision.

What the polls tell us: Decreasing racial polarization

In recent years, Democrats have gained support among white voters with college degrees, while Republicans have gained support among black and Latino voters, especially those without college degrees and those who are religiously conservative.

This means that American politics is somewhat less polarized along racial and ethnic lines, which is a good thing. But this is a difficult pill to swallow for many on the left, challenging the belief that voters of color naturally lean their way.

The key question is how big these trends have become, and how much they have benefited from each other. Do the shifts cancel each other out, or has one party gained a significant advantage?

Because Harris is of mixed black and Asian descent, some may be surprised that her strength among white voters is responsible for her clear leads in the northern battleground states of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan. There is.

Conversely, in the states where she is lagging, particularly Arizona, weakness among white voters is a major issue.

A poll by The New York Times and Siena College found that she behind arizonafound that she lags among white independents and moderate Republicans. What her investigation revealed was that beyond the stateas in a recent article in the Wall Street Journal, found her Build better relationships with those very groupsAs Kyle Kondik of the University of Virginia Center for Politics pointed out in an analysis this week.

In contrast, Trump has historically High support rate among black votersMany studies have shown that , especially men.

Harris still wins an overwhelming majority of black voters, but 76% to 11%, 8% uncertain For example, in the latest Economist/YouGov survey. However, this is significantly lower than the 92% that President Biden received in 2020.

The question mark for Mr. Trump is whether the black supporters who show up in the polls will show up in the actual vote. Former Democratic pollster Adam Carlson summarized it this way: Data from multiple studiespoints out that 2020 polls significantly overestimated support for Trump among black voters. That might happen again this year.

Among Latino voters, Harris is currently doing about the same as Biden in 2020, 60% to 35% in the YouGov poll. It’s not as good as Democrats would like, but she did it eliminated the deficit In the spring it was even bigger. However, many studies show that Latinos have a higher proportion of undecided voters than other groups.

Polling is less prevalent among Asian American voters, but one study found that Conducted in September by AAPI Data The University of Chicago’s NORC showed Harris leading Trump 66% to 28%, a significant improvement for the Democrat since Biden dropped out of the race.

and a big gender difference

In the AAPI poll, gender rather than ethnicity appears to be driving much of Harris’ support, with Harris receiving greater support than Biden among Asian American women.

This is consistent with other studies that have found very large gender disparities this year. The gap could match or even exceed the gap in 2016, when Hillary Clinton’s campaign highlighted her status as the first woman to win a major party’s presidential nomination.

The year saw a 26-point gender gap. Clinton wins over women by 15 pointsTrump won by an 11-point margin, 41% to 52%, compared to 54% to 39% among men, according to a detailed Pew Research Center analysis.

in In 2020, the gender gap narrowsPew was found. Now I’m back. In a recent NPR/Marist poll, 34 point differenceCarlson said Harris won by 18 points among women and Trump by 16 points among men. That was on the high side in recent surveys, but polls this fall found an average difference of 22 points.

One notable part of the gender gap has to do with young voters.

a New York Times/Siena College Investigation got a lot of attention when they found that while men under 30 are leaning toward Trump, young women are leaning sharply toward Harris.

But as Vanderbilt University political scientist John Sides recently pointed out, even other high-quality studies The difference between young men and women is much smallerboth young men and young women support Harris.

Who is right? Exit polls conducted by major television networks and the Associated Press may provide some preliminary clues, but we won’t know for sure until researchers can fully examine the data, several months after vote counting. I don’t know.

underestimate trump

“If you’re reading this right now, you’re probably thinking, ‘But don’t polls always underestimate the Republican vote?’

no.

In both 2000 and 2012, polls underestimated Democrats.

Polls underestimated Trump’s vote in 2016. After that, the polling agency I looked into what the problem was. And I set out to fix it.

They were not successful: The survey once again missed out on many supporters. In 2020.

So pollsters tried new methods to get the right results. Maybe I’ll be successful this time. Perhaps they will underestimate Trump supporters again.

Or maybe you’ve over-corrected and your results are skewed in a different direction.

Errors are expected. I don’t know which way it will go.

I’m sorry, but even an “internal” poll doesn’t tell us.

Don’t think you’ll get better results just by clicking on a headline about a leaked internal investigation.

Yes, campaigns have more data than pollsters.

But there is no guarantee that they know very well who will win. For example, in 2012, Mitt Romney’s campaign polls showed him in the lead. he wasn’t ready then President Obama punched him.. Romney is not alone in this. Campaign research is subject to the same limitations that public opinion polls face.

In fact, getting accurate results from horse races is not a top priority for election pollsters. Campaigns primarily use surveys to: test messagetrying to see which words most effectively sway groups of voters. It requires consistency from one study to the next, not absolute top-line accuracy.

And campaigns are selectively leaked. If you run 20 polls in a close race, you’re almost guaranteed to see some candidates trailing, and some candidates trailing. This is how probability works. Experience show They will divulge anything that supports the narrative they want to cultivate.

That is why analysts who compile the average values ​​of public opinion polls Internal investigations are usually discounted There are some differences, as Nate Silver recently detailed.

This year, both camps seem intent on pushing the idea that Harris is the underdog. The vice president has consistently embraced this label in his speeches, perhaps hoping to motivate Democratic voters. Of course, Trump can’t stand being anything but a top dog.

So it’s no surprise that both parties leaked polls showing Trump with a slight lead. It’s a shame that they don’t even distribute tranquilizers to anxious Democrats.

Who will show up?

One of the major sources of error in campaign polls, and the main reason why surveys differ from each other, is that polling organizations are trying to measure a population that doesn’t yet exist: people who will vote in an election that hasn’t yet taken place. That’s what it means.

A bipartisan polling team conducting research for NBC News recently found that Experiment showing the impact of pollster assumptions on turnout.

Their latest poll shows Harris and Trump tied nationally, 48% to 48%, using a preset turnout model.

But with a few small adjustments to the turnout model, assuming women make up 53% of voters instead of 52%, or white voters making up 70% instead of 72%, Harris He led with 49% and 46%. Similarly, small adjustments in the other direction would give Trump an advantage.

Making good estimates is especially complicated when turnout is high. In low-turnout elections, almost everyone who votes is a regular voter with a consistent track record. Elections with high turnout attract many new voters.

In 2020, when voter turnout hit an all-time high, about one in four voters hadn’t voted four years ago, according to Pew data. A measure of voter enthusiasm this year suggests that turnout is expected to be even higher in the future, despite the uncertainties surrounding the survey.

So, are you worried about the election? Go for a long walk. Look at the baseball playoffs. Or, if you feel committed, volunteer for your favorite candidate. Knock on the door or make a phone call.

But if you want to stay sane, stop scrolling catastrophically through polls. They won’t tell you what you want to know.

What else should I read?

This week’s poll: Why do Asian immigrants come to the United States and how do they view life here?

On Saturday it was written: do they really believe that: America’s political turmoil has psychological causes.

LA Times Feature: Donald Trump threatened revenge on California. Should we believe him?

—
Was this newsletter forwarded to you? Sign up here to get it delivered to your inbox.