In the wake of Donald Trump’s conviction on 34 felony counts in a Manhattan courtroom, both his supporters and his detractors looked for evidence that the outcome had influenced the presidential election in their direction.
Trump came out of the gates quickly, asserting that he’d gotten a six-point gain in the polls thanks to a dubious survey conducted by the Daily Mail. Supporters of President Biden had something more robust to which they could point: data from the New York Times, based on a Siena College poll, that showed a small shift toward Biden.
As time passed, polling averages (like the one from 538) didn’t indicate much movement. And on Wednesday, the Times published the results of its new Siena poll: Trump had gained ground, thanks in part to Republicans rallying around him.
The shift since the paper’s April national poll is modest. Then, Trump had a one-point poll among likely voters; now, it’s four points. There are lots of caveats, including that we’re looking at likely voters and focusing on the head-to-head polling question rather than the one that includes third-party voters. But this is, in part, the point: The story here is more about uncertainty than certainty.
Consider the shifts among various demographic groups since the Times’s April poll. At the time, Biden’s soft support among younger voters was a focus of the Times’ coverage. But that two-point Biden advantage among those under 30 is now a 19-point one — in line with the 24-point edge he had in 2020. Maybe this is a function of the Biden team reaching out to younger voters or maybe it’s an indication that his base is (as his team has promised would occur) coming home. Or — probably — it’s a function of the way that subgroup polling among relatively small populations can swing.
Are the shifts among the youngest voters or those ages 45 to 64 or among Black voters significant? Do they show real movement? Or are they blips in a poll that the Times’s polling lead has suggested might be an outlier?
None of this is to suggest that the Times poll — or any other individual poll — isn’t useful and doesn’t offer insight. It is, instead, to point out that there are various ways in which there are incentives to elevate specific poll results in ways that might be misleading. Trump’s celebration of that Daily Mail poll is one, picking up an obviously suspect result as indicative of change. Extracting an interesting tidbit from a single poll is another. Tidbits from reliable polls are valid, but they demand caution and context. (In the interest of full disclosure, I will admit having myself at times been less cautious than is perhaps warranted.)
With those caveats in mind, it’s useful to consider the ways in which the Times-Siena poll captures Trump’s enthusiasm advantage. There were several questions centered around the fervency of support for each candidate, including on favorability, concerns about age and whether each party’s presumptive nominee should actually be the nominee. On each question, Trump fared better both overall — and with his own party.
Trump’s overall numbers are in part driven by his fervent support, of course. Trump voters make up about half of poll respondents, and their enthusiasm therefore colors half of the sample. Nor is this a surprising result. Biden’s support has always been less energetic, with voters in both 2020 and in 2024 polling often indicating that their planned votes for Biden being largely a reflection of their opposition to Trump.
There is another consistency in the new Times poll: A large chunk of Republicans and people who plan to vote for Trump in November believe that he committed a serious federal crime. A poll earlier this year found a similar result.
This isn’t a reflection of indifference among Republicans to the Trump conviction. That’s real; 9 in 10 Republicans said they viewed the charges against the former president as being politically motivated. There’s an ironic “I’m voting for the felon!” rallying cry running through his base of support that reflects skepticism about the indictments. But the result above is simply indifference about Trump’s actions, an acceptance among some supporters that he actually committed a crime.
So where does the race stand? Polling averages tend to be a more reliable way to view how things have shifted. The Washington Post has one of its own, one that uses high-quality national and state-level polling to calculate who voters currently favor in the presidential race. Instead of looking at one poll, it looks at lots of polls, a better way to track trends and positions.
It hasn’t changed much this year.
There is a lot of information included in individual polls, providing lots of opportunity to pick out apparent shifts and surprising results. But the state of the 2024 presidential race is what it has long been and what it will almost certainly continue to be until November: close and unpredictable.
Lenny Bronner contributed to this report.
Source link : https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/06/27/danger-over-reading-individual-polls/
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Publish date : 2024-06-27 12:06:35
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