WASHINGTON – If polls are any guide, and there are plenty of questions about them, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump is far better off than he was at this point in 2020 or his winning 2016 White House campaign. Things are better now.
Yes, Trump is trailing Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris in most polls. But the most important caveat is that he lost to the incumbent vice president by a narrower margin than he did in the first two general elections he faced — according to pollsters in both races. It received a higher score from actual voters.
To be sure, Republicans are banking on what some pollsters call “hidden Trump votes,” although pollsters say they’re not sure if this group still exists. During a rally in Reading, Pennsylvania, on Wednesday, President Trump claimed that polls showed him with a three-point lead in the Keystone State and that “this probably means 10 points.”
Although the Trump campaign lost the popular vote in 2016 to Democrat Hillary Clinton by a margin of just over 2 percentage points, the Trump campaign won enough states to win in the electoral system, and the closer the 2024 national polls approached, the more likely the Trump campaign would win. According to the theory that the possibility of to win more voters.
That’s not the norm, pollsters say.
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During this cycle, pollsters changed their methodology, in part to take into account “hidden” Trump supporters. That includes people who intend to vote for him but don’t want to say it publicly, as well as other supporters who are difficult to find through traditional voting methods such as by phone. There are also signs that different voter groups will increase their participation in elections, citing new issues ranging from anti-abortion laws to the rising cost of living.
“Fundamental questions are being asked that no one will be able to answer until Election Day,” said poll expert Frank Luntz.
Also, national polls are less important than individual state polls, which are also about the same. Most polls are within the margin of error in seven key battleground states: Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Georgia, Arizona, Nevada, and North Carolina.
“What we can say with certainty is that all seven battleground states are very close,” said Republican pollster Whit Ayers. “They are all essentially tied together.”
As of Friday, Real Clear Politics’ average of recent national polls had Ms. Harris leading Mr. Trump by 1.8 percentage points.
At this point four years ago, Democratic candidate Joe Biden led then-President Trump by 10.3 percentage points in the RCP national average. Biden won the popular vote and electoral votes by a much smaller margin. In 2016, Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton led the national RCP average by 6 percentage points.
Both elections were pretty close.
Back in 2016, Clinton won the popular vote over Trump by a margin of 48.2% to 46.1% (the remaining votes went to third-party candidates, specifically Libertarian Party candidate Gary Johnson and Green Party candidate distributed to Jill Stein). But Trump won the Electoral College by a landslide margin of 304 to 227 (plus seven “faithful electors” who voted for other candidates).
Four years later, Mr. Biden won the popular vote by a wide margin of 51.3% to 46.9%. He also won in the Electoral College, 306 to 232.
Simon Rosenberg, a Democratic strategist who studies the data, said the pollster had corrected an earlier methodological error. He also pointed out that Republican candidates for the U.S. House and Senate underperformed in the polls in the 2022 midterm elections, and that Trump himself underperformed in the Republican presidential primary this year.
He said it’s just as likely that Harris and Democrats will get hidden votes this time around.
“The election is really close,” Rosenberg said. “Everything is within the margin of error… but we have a significant financial and land advantage, so there’s still a good chance we’ll pull it out.”
After all, no one knows whether this election will be similar to 2016, 2020, or something entirely different.
“I think it’s somewhere in between,” Lantz said. “So it’s too close to call.”
