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Why The MSM is Misinterpreting the Polls [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2023-12-26

In terms of polling, 2023 has been an awful year for President Joe Biden. The president finds himself trailing Donald Trump in national polls, despite the White House talking up how great the economy is. The president is losing support among young people, Hispanics and African Americans. This is despite Democrats having so much success with special elections in the post-Dobbs era. The president’s age has been a factor, his gaffes have seemed less endearing, and calls for him to step aside have grown. Many Democrats have started to panic that Trump will win the election in 2024. I’m here to tell you that this media-driven narrative is complete bunk. There is far more uncertainty around polling than this media narrative of a Biden collapse allows, the incumbent maintains some advantages, the post-Dobbs era has been a gift to Democrats, and polls do not reflect how people will vote come Election Day. Indeed, even a week away from Election Day, pols are not always predictive. Voters need to learn to read polls the right way, rather than getting sucked into a revenue-driven media narrative.

It is true that the incumbency advantage has been in decline, with people across the world revolting against elites, but it does remain. In a presidential election, if anyone has the advantage, it’s the incumbent. The reasons are simple: the president has the tools to create favorable conditions for his run. In Biden’s case, where the economy seems to be a particular weak point, he has about eleven months to get it right. There’s nothing the challenger can do to change America. All the challenger can do is campaign, the incumbent has the power to fix problems. That doesn’t mean that the president will win, as Trump’s loss shows, but that Biden’s poll numbers have eleven months to recover, and in politics, eleven months is an eternity. In an election, you’d rather be defending than attacking, trying to keep power rather than trying to take it.

In December 2011, Mitt Romney was leading President Barack Obama in the polls, after President Obama’s polling numbers had suffered a “shock slump” that gave Romney his “biggest lead yet” , with Romney leading President Obama 45-39 according to the Rasmussen Reports survey. That is far worse than President Biden’s polling numbers. By that time, President Obama’s approval ratings had fallen from the heady heights of 2009 when he enjoyed a 70-80% approval, to approval ratings that were just below 50%. In 2004, Senator John Kerry was leading the polls against President George W. Bush. In both cases, the incumbent won.

With about eleven months to the election, certainty about the outcome of the presidential elections is a sign of madness. According to prediction markets, President Biden has a 72% chance of being the Republican nominee and Trump has an 83% chance of being the Democratic nominee, so the combined probability of them facing off is just 59.76% (83% x 72%). That figure may astonish a lot of people, because it seems so low, but it does reflect the fact that there is far more uncertainty than the media likes to portray and there remains an almost 1 in 3 chance that we do not have a Biden-Trump election. If anything, the race is really 50-50, a coin toss between the Republican and Democratic nominees, where the likely but not certain nominees are President Biden and Trump.

Since Dobbs, Democrats have consistently outperformed polls. In the pre-Dobbs era, Republicans overperformed by 3 points, whereas in the post-Dobbs era, Democrats have outperformed in special elections by increasing margins, from 5 points in 2022 to 8 points in 2023. Talk of Red Waves and panic among some Democrats have been swatted away by voters who, affronted by Republican attempts to constrain the reproductive rights of women, have voted Democrat in the 2022 midterms, the 2023 special elections, the Kentucky gubernatorial elections, the 2023 Wisconsin Supreme Court election, the 2023 Virginia House of Delegates election, and voted for Democrat backed positions on issues such as the 2022 Kansas abortion referendum, and the 2023 Ohio reproductive rights initiative.

What the two above points show is the amount of uncertainty embedded in polls. Even if the president had these exact numbers a week before the election, his numbers would be a polling error away from him winning the election. Anything below 100% probability is uncertain. Even if a politician has a 80% chance of winning the election, like, say, some polls suggested Hillary Clinton had against Trump, that does not represent certainty. A week before the 2016 election, Clinton was leading Trump by 3.3 points, which was a margin of error away from Trump winning.

You see, all the polls tell us is what people think at a point in time, which is very different from saying that it shows how people will vote in the polling booths. This isn’t a call to ignore polls, they are certainly informative, but they should not be seen as if they tell us what will happen on Election Day. Each candidate responds in their own way to public perceptions, and this has the effect of shaping and changing those perceptions. For instance, if perceptions of the economy are bad, the president will, over the next eleven months, respond to that by working to boost the economy. If he succeeds, those perceptions will be different come November.

This article presents a less sexy idea than the incessant drum of polling news that the media loves. The media, however, isn’t invested in truth: the media is a business, and they have a product to sell, news. No news means no revenue. No newspaper ever went a day without reporting a story, because that would mean no revenues. The media loves polling news because they bring the tension of an election that is now eleven months away, to a story on today’s headlines. “Voters Currently Favour Trump But the Election is Eleven Months Away and Remains a Coin Toss” is not a headline that gets people clicking on a video or article. Yet, this is a better reflection of the truth. My unsexy conclusion: the president is a polling error away from winning, and has the tools to do just that; Democrats have outperformed polls post-Dobbs; and polls don’t really tell us how people will vote on Election Day, just what they think now. So, ignore the panic and mayhem and enjoy the holidays.

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