My son worked on the Mandela Barnes campaign. We were in utter disbelief when he lost. He travelled all over the state standing up for workers, farmers, women, seniors. I cried hard when he lost. It's different this time after Dobbs. Julie Chavez Rodriquez, the campaign manager, is powerful and creative. We have strong ground games across the states, many campaign offices, fantastic fundraising, so many surrogates (Adam Kinzinger, Liz Cheney, Bernie Sanders, AOC) and of course Tim Walz is a strong man with fiery speeches. He doesn't mince words! We have Gwen Walz and Doug Emhoff campaigning all over. Senator Raphael Warnock was in PA last weekend with Josh Shapiro. Taylor Swift got many Swifties to register to vote in just one day. There is a Swifties for Kamala Substack (Paint the Town Blue) organizing canvassing, phone banking, and texting events. Veterans, Unions, Republicans for Harris are all canvassing. We are going to win. We have to work really hard to the end. Ignore the polls and mainstream media. Don't agonize! DO SOMETHING!
My son was a Democratic poll worker in my hometown. He was repeatedly harassed and threatened with arrest by a Republican poll watcher.
My state is solidly Blue, but this didn’t deter the aggressive tactics and despite my son’s reporting her abuse, she reminded a damning fixture from sunrise to tallying the votes. The treatment continued without remedy and eventually he gave up his job. It was a terrible indication of the severity of abuse the Republicans are willing to resort to in the “fight” for “free elections!” They are full of dirty tricks and have no remorse or respect for the rights of others! We live in divisive and troubling time. What next for “America, the Beautiful?”
They don't see how his violent rhetoric has made this behavior ok. I was actually told my "hate speak" about him was "just as bad as what he does"... no I speak ill of 1 person and have never talked about violence. I am a poll worker myself and am not looking forward to this election but also have no problems standing my ground against these people. Very sorry this happened to your son
Awesome deep dive. There is really nothing that they can't/won't turn into a weapon to game the system. Its the only way they can win. The goal of their sinister ploys is to poison our elections. They have succeeded in the past. Hoping hard that dems are finding effective ways to fight back. The preservation of our democracy depends on it.
I'd really like to know who is behind the NBC poll this week that showed a dead heat, at the same time that ABC and CBS were showing Harris continuing to lead.
Okay, but there’s a counter-factor. When the projected lead passes some point, the voters for that candidate don’t feel compelled to vote, since their candidate will win anyway. A slight lead for the opposition, otoh, often increases turnout: “If we show up, we win.” When one floods the zone, one doesn’t care what kind of shit it is, but contrived polls can work against the contrivers, especially if they haven’t bothered to figure out how the numbers interact with these different factors. That they are not optimizing in this way makes me think of a Hail Mary pass. I agree with you that a major focus has to be the post-election game, but that plus the lack of precision both suggest desperation by the Republicans.
I think the concern, a *very* valid one at that, is that certain “low-propensity” voters, ie those that don’t read political analysis every day and are just now starting to pay attention, will become discouraged and not think it worth their time to get out and vote. For some, particularly in states without mail-in or early voting on the weekend, taking the time off from one or more jobs is a financial issue that would be hard to justify if they felt their vote “wouldn’t matter”. This would be particularly true in communities of color, which lean Democratic.
In an election where one candidate will likely win by less than 300K votes in the swing states, every small change can have serious consequences.
Anecdotally speaking, I've seen posts from frustrated voters in my very large, very red state about their Gen Z kids feeling disaffected. Feeling that their vote won't matter in Texas anyway, so why bother? While I have (a bare modicum of) sympathy for that position, that attitude is one reason why TX keeps ending up with far-right statewide officeholders.
But when Gen Z becomes the age of millennials, and when they have daughters of their own, they will be intensely interested. Ask those Gen Zers if they would like to experience voting, because if they don't vote now, they may never have that experience again in the future.
An excuse to be lazy due to a MAGA's belief in a sure thing could be an advantage.
Sun Tzu:
"The opportunity to secure ourselves against defeat lies in our own hands, but the opportunity of defeating the enemy is provided by the enemy himself."
I’m not all that sure there are depressed Democrats that have given up. The polls have been wrong since 2018. Why start believing them now? Besides, the Harris/Walz campaign has run their campaign as if they’re behind. Unless there are internals that aren’t being written about, I’m counting on the outcome of the election to be the real poll.
My take is that, as a consequence of the ginned-up polling 'showing' a lead for Herr Shitzinpants von Fuckface, that could tip overconfident MAGAs into doing what they do best: be lazy.
Stay home.
"Vote on January 5th."
"We don't need your votes."
"'ll shoot your goat".
I made one of those up.
Conversely, have Dems *ever* been more motivated? Dobbs? Deportations? 'Suspending' the Constitution? Retribution? Making rich fucks richer? The tariff Trump taxes?
"When I see a poll number now, my first question is not what it says but rather, “Who is saying it?" - This should be the first question we ask of everything we read and see, and that has never changed.
Maybe polls should be eliminated? Seems like red voters may as well use a ouija board to tell them what they want to hear instead of what will really happen on Election Day. The point is, get out the BLUE VOTE!
The simple answer is it’s all about the money. Pollsters are paid handsomely and the mainstream media needs a “horse race” to sell subscriptions, newspapers, digital ads, and clickthroughs. That’s *precisely* what polls provide them with. Sad.
Jay, thanks again for your calmness and clearheadedness. Your examples to remain calm and look for the sources has been extremely helpful, especially modeling what to look for in the data. I've done this myself now for some of the Indiana polls, just to see if what they're saying here is reasonable or might be skewed. It's been very helpful to my sanity!
These "polls" are one tactic of Trump's larger strategy to contest the election. When he loses PA or any of the other important swing states and as a result loses the electoral college vote, he's going to cite his leading in the "polls" in those states as "evidence" of vote fraud ("all the polls showed me leading bigly and if I lost it has to be fraud by Comrade Kamala and the Democrat socialists"). Its just one of several tactics his campaign will roll out over the next few weeks. It won't be lame-ass grifter Rudy G. and "Release the Kracken" Sidney Powell but real lawyers and on the ground operatives.
I think that one of the reasons Trump's campaign is short of funds is that they are using millions to pay lawyers in the battleground states to be ready to litigate the results as soon as the polls close. The other reason is that Trump is moving campaign funds into PACs he controls so that he has a war-chest to pay lawyers after the election to fight the 2020 election interference cases and the documents case. If he wins (God forbid) those cases are largely moot but if he doesn't he's going to need tens of millions of dollars to pay his legal bills. and he sure as hell isn't going to use any of his own money.
Not that Trump considers my advice, but if I'm him, I'm saving my legal funds for the onslaught that is going to hit him for his wide-ranging criminal activity after the election. He's scheduled for sentencing November 16. He may discover himself needing to sock away commissary money for ramen poker.
While all of this is valid and the observations made are important, I think it's also important to remember that most of America doesn't read 538. The media wants a horserace and would be pretending the race was tied even if Harris was up 10 ("cracks could be starting to show in the coalition..."). Fun fact: the Economist/YouGov tracking poll taken this week in 2020 found only 39% believed Biden would win to Trump's 38%. Biden led that poll 52-42 with likely voters. The most recent version of the same poll found the question tied at 38% (Harris had had a roughly 45-40 lead at the end of September, so the shifting mood might indeed have had some effect). https://docs.cdn.yougov.com/1ace2lgidt/econTabReport.pdf
I'd also argue that the permission structure would be there if the media reported precisely the truth: This is a 49-46 race, just at the edge of where a Democrat would be firmly favored, with Harris ahead by a point or two in enough states to win, well within a typical polling error. Plenty of Republicans in that 46% to give you permission, and the idea that "Trump is capped at 46" is miles and miles beyond most Americans' understanding and may not even prove to be true. We had the whole Trump Coup and January 6th play out in an election where he trailed the polls by double digits for all of October, so I'm not sure he needs a race to be close to contest it.
One place I absolutely agree, though: this sucks to live through. Look past the polls, though, and you see a news cycle that is constantly negative on Trump and positive-to-neutral on Harris. Sure there are op-eds and Substacks and "reporting" on the polls designed to make Democrats anxious, but that's not going to reach undecided voters. In October 2020 Hillary Clinton had actual scandals that the press was breathlessly obsessing over. Nothing like that is happening this time as Trump melts down day after day (and the Woodward book, and the Smith motion...)
October 2020 Hillary Clinton? Wasn’t that October 2016? Also, I see a news cycle that sane washes trump’s increasing crazy nonsense blathering while complaining that Harris isn’t doing enough of what it is they want, no matter what she IS doing. They keep moving the goalposts for Harris, at the same time they twist the narrative to make it appear that Trump is a normal, sane candidate, which obviously to anyone outside his cult, is not what’s happening.
Maga morons and corrupt gop have no other choice than show plenty of polls giving trumpeto winning. Whatever right or wrong. Just to add weight to their next steps. Meaning … they will shout that elections were rigged by Dems and show that bs polls as a kind of proof to screw Kamala victory. Pathetic and third rate definitely, but it may work. No shame. They do not care about what is true or not. Vote blue! Forza Kamala
At what point did the Republicans develop a “reverse” Midas touch, one that corrupts everything it touches? And why is their degeneration so closely and clearly tied to Trump? Maybe the question should be, did he corrupt the Republican Party, did it corrupt him or did they corrupt each other? No matter what actually happened, one thing is clear: they are now both corrupt, perhaps irredeemably.
Well, Nixon was smart but corrupt and Reagan was...uh, "not smart" and more than corrupt enough to pull some underhanded shenanigans and GHW Bush certainly wasn't simon pure (and I'm sure Billy Barr could tell a few tales if he was of a mind to) and Dubya....nothing immediately springs to mind but I'm pretty sure he was no more pure than his old man--after all, Dubya's brothers ran their own rather corrupt scams (Neil with The Silverado Savings and Loan scandal and Jeb with his attempts to rig the 2000 election count for his brother...So Trump inherits corruption from both his chosen party and his own family...and he (or his loyal minions) is working it.
Well written, Jay, but you forgot the most influential race of 2022: Ohio Senate. When red-wave polling showed Tim Ryan was behind his opponent the DNC pulled back. The result? We now have to deal with JD Vance. Why doesn't _this_ story ever get told?
My son worked on the Mandela Barnes campaign. We were in utter disbelief when he lost. He travelled all over the state standing up for workers, farmers, women, seniors. I cried hard when he lost. It's different this time after Dobbs. Julie Chavez Rodriquez, the campaign manager, is powerful and creative. We have strong ground games across the states, many campaign offices, fantastic fundraising, so many surrogates (Adam Kinzinger, Liz Cheney, Bernie Sanders, AOC) and of course Tim Walz is a strong man with fiery speeches. He doesn't mince words! We have Gwen Walz and Doug Emhoff campaigning all over. Senator Raphael Warnock was in PA last weekend with Josh Shapiro. Taylor Swift got many Swifties to register to vote in just one day. There is a Swifties for Kamala Substack (Paint the Town Blue) organizing canvassing, phone banking, and texting events. Veterans, Unions, Republicans for Harris are all canvassing. We are going to win. We have to work really hard to the end. Ignore the polls and mainstream media. Don't agonize! DO SOMETHING!
Now is the time to step up!
My son was a Democratic poll worker in my hometown. He was repeatedly harassed and threatened with arrest by a Republican poll watcher.
My state is solidly Blue, but this didn’t deter the aggressive tactics and despite my son’s reporting her abuse, she reminded a damning fixture from sunrise to tallying the votes. The treatment continued without remedy and eventually he gave up his job. It was a terrible indication of the severity of abuse the Republicans are willing to resort to in the “fight” for “free elections!” They are full of dirty tricks and have no remorse or respect for the rights of others! We live in divisive and troubling time. What next for “America, the Beautiful?”
They don't see how his violent rhetoric has made this behavior ok. I was actually told my "hate speak" about him was "just as bad as what he does"... no I speak ill of 1 person and have never talked about violence. I am a poll worker myself and am not looking forward to this election but also have no problems standing my ground against these people. Very sorry this happened to your son
Thx for the Taylor Swift Substack.
Awesome deep dive. There is really nothing that they can't/won't turn into a weapon to game the system. Its the only way they can win. The goal of their sinister ploys is to poison our elections. They have succeeded in the past. Hoping hard that dems are finding effective ways to fight back. The preservation of our democracy depends on it.
Thanks for reading!
I'd really like to know who is behind the NBC poll this week that showed a dead heat, at the same time that ABC and CBS were showing Harris continuing to lead.
Anyone can put up a poll
Poll: MAGA'S Flee US by Millions to South America
I see you pick up February, 2025's paper.
🤣 Dang, I love it!
Okay, but there’s a counter-factor. When the projected lead passes some point, the voters for that candidate don’t feel compelled to vote, since their candidate will win anyway. A slight lead for the opposition, otoh, often increases turnout: “If we show up, we win.” When one floods the zone, one doesn’t care what kind of shit it is, but contrived polls can work against the contrivers, especially if they haven’t bothered to figure out how the numbers interact with these different factors. That they are not optimizing in this way makes me think of a Hail Mary pass. I agree with you that a major focus has to be the post-election game, but that plus the lack of precision both suggest desperation by the Republicans.
I think the concern, a *very* valid one at that, is that certain “low-propensity” voters, ie those that don’t read political analysis every day and are just now starting to pay attention, will become discouraged and not think it worth their time to get out and vote. For some, particularly in states without mail-in or early voting on the weekend, taking the time off from one or more jobs is a financial issue that would be hard to justify if they felt their vote “wouldn’t matter”. This would be particularly true in communities of color, which lean Democratic.
In an election where one candidate will likely win by less than 300K votes in the swing states, every small change can have serious consequences.
Anecdotally speaking, I've seen posts from frustrated voters in my very large, very red state about their Gen Z kids feeling disaffected. Feeling that their vote won't matter in Texas anyway, so why bother? While I have (a bare modicum of) sympathy for that position, that attitude is one reason why TX keeps ending up with far-right statewide officeholders.
But when Gen Z becomes the age of millennials, and when they have daughters of their own, they will be intensely interested. Ask those Gen Zers if they would like to experience voting, because if they don't vote now, they may never have that experience again in the future.
An excuse to be lazy due to a MAGA's belief in a sure thing could be an advantage.
Sun Tzu:
"The opportunity to secure ourselves against defeat lies in our own hands, but the opportunity of defeating the enemy is provided by the enemy himself."
Look at this link that shows there are tons of Republican-aligned pollsters flooding the zone to skew the averages. They did this in 2022 as well!
https://flood-watch.vercel.app/
Polymarkets...betting by Bitcoin/crypto only, and largely overseas punters. Oh, yeah, backed by Peter Thiel...LOL!
Also...TPM on betting markets...very useful to those who may casually follow Polymarkets ebb and flow:
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/a-short-note-on-political-betting-markets
I’m not all that sure there are depressed Democrats that have given up. The polls have been wrong since 2018. Why start believing them now? Besides, the Harris/Walz campaign has run their campaign as if they’re behind. Unless there are internals that aren’t being written about, I’m counting on the outcome of the election to be the real poll.
My take is that, as a consequence of the ginned-up polling 'showing' a lead for Herr Shitzinpants von Fuckface, that could tip overconfident MAGAs into doing what they do best: be lazy.
Stay home.
"Vote on January 5th."
"We don't need your votes."
"'ll shoot your goat".
I made one of those up.
Conversely, have Dems *ever* been more motivated? Dobbs? Deportations? 'Suspending' the Constitution? Retribution? Making rich fucks richer? The tariff Trump taxes?
Michael Moore did a nice bit on how they've been wrong since Reagan. I haven't checked his work though. :-)
"When I see a poll number now, my first question is not what it says but rather, “Who is saying it?" - This should be the first question we ask of everything we read and see, and that has never changed.
Maybe polls should be eliminated? Seems like red voters may as well use a ouija board to tell them what they want to hear instead of what will really happen on Election Day. The point is, get out the BLUE VOTE!
The simple answer is it’s all about the money. Pollsters are paid handsomely and the mainstream media needs a “horse race” to sell subscriptions, newspapers, digital ads, and clickthroughs. That’s *precisely* what polls provide them with. Sad.
Nailed it.
Jay, thanks again for your calmness and clearheadedness. Your examples to remain calm and look for the sources has been extremely helpful, especially modeling what to look for in the data. I've done this myself now for some of the Indiana polls, just to see if what they're saying here is reasonable or might be skewed. It's been very helpful to my sanity!
These "polls" are one tactic of Trump's larger strategy to contest the election. When he loses PA or any of the other important swing states and as a result loses the electoral college vote, he's going to cite his leading in the "polls" in those states as "evidence" of vote fraud ("all the polls showed me leading bigly and if I lost it has to be fraud by Comrade Kamala and the Democrat socialists"). Its just one of several tactics his campaign will roll out over the next few weeks. It won't be lame-ass grifter Rudy G. and "Release the Kracken" Sidney Powell but real lawyers and on the ground operatives.
I think that one of the reasons Trump's campaign is short of funds is that they are using millions to pay lawyers in the battleground states to be ready to litigate the results as soon as the polls close. The other reason is that Trump is moving campaign funds into PACs he controls so that he has a war-chest to pay lawyers after the election to fight the 2020 election interference cases and the documents case. If he wins (God forbid) those cases are largely moot but if he doesn't he's going to need tens of millions of dollars to pay his legal bills. and he sure as hell isn't going to use any of his own money.
Not that Trump considers my advice, but if I'm him, I'm saving my legal funds for the onslaught that is going to hit him for his wide-ranging criminal activity after the election. He's scheduled for sentencing November 16. He may discover himself needing to sock away commissary money for ramen poker.
While all of this is valid and the observations made are important, I think it's also important to remember that most of America doesn't read 538. The media wants a horserace and would be pretending the race was tied even if Harris was up 10 ("cracks could be starting to show in the coalition..."). Fun fact: the Economist/YouGov tracking poll taken this week in 2020 found only 39% believed Biden would win to Trump's 38%. Biden led that poll 52-42 with likely voters. The most recent version of the same poll found the question tied at 38% (Harris had had a roughly 45-40 lead at the end of September, so the shifting mood might indeed have had some effect). https://docs.cdn.yougov.com/1ace2lgidt/econTabReport.pdf
I'd also argue that the permission structure would be there if the media reported precisely the truth: This is a 49-46 race, just at the edge of where a Democrat would be firmly favored, with Harris ahead by a point or two in enough states to win, well within a typical polling error. Plenty of Republicans in that 46% to give you permission, and the idea that "Trump is capped at 46" is miles and miles beyond most Americans' understanding and may not even prove to be true. We had the whole Trump Coup and January 6th play out in an election where he trailed the polls by double digits for all of October, so I'm not sure he needs a race to be close to contest it.
One place I absolutely agree, though: this sucks to live through. Look past the polls, though, and you see a news cycle that is constantly negative on Trump and positive-to-neutral on Harris. Sure there are op-eds and Substacks and "reporting" on the polls designed to make Democrats anxious, but that's not going to reach undecided voters. In October 2020 Hillary Clinton had actual scandals that the press was breathlessly obsessing over. Nothing like that is happening this time as Trump melts down day after day (and the Woodward book, and the Smith motion...)
October 2020 Hillary Clinton? Wasn’t that October 2016? Also, I see a news cycle that sane washes trump’s increasing crazy nonsense blathering while complaining that Harris isn’t doing enough of what it is they want, no matter what she IS doing. They keep moving the goalposts for Harris, at the same time they twist the narrative to make it appear that Trump is a normal, sane candidate, which obviously to anyone outside his cult, is not what’s happening.
Maga morons and corrupt gop have no other choice than show plenty of polls giving trumpeto winning. Whatever right or wrong. Just to add weight to their next steps. Meaning … they will shout that elections were rigged by Dems and show that bs polls as a kind of proof to screw Kamala victory. Pathetic and third rate definitely, but it may work. No shame. They do not care about what is true or not. Vote blue! Forza Kamala
At what point did the Republicans develop a “reverse” Midas touch, one that corrupts everything it touches? And why is their degeneration so closely and clearly tied to Trump? Maybe the question should be, did he corrupt the Republican Party, did it corrupt him or did they corrupt each other? No matter what actually happened, one thing is clear: they are now both corrupt, perhaps irredeemably.
Well, Nixon was smart but corrupt and Reagan was...uh, "not smart" and more than corrupt enough to pull some underhanded shenanigans and GHW Bush certainly wasn't simon pure (and I'm sure Billy Barr could tell a few tales if he was of a mind to) and Dubya....nothing immediately springs to mind but I'm pretty sure he was no more pure than his old man--after all, Dubya's brothers ran their own rather corrupt scams (Neil with The Silverado Savings and Loan scandal and Jeb with his attempts to rig the 2000 election count for his brother...So Trump inherits corruption from both his chosen party and his own family...and he (or his loyal minions) is working it.
Well written, Jay, but you forgot the most influential race of 2022: Ohio Senate. When red-wave polling showed Tim Ryan was behind his opponent the DNC pulled back. The result? We now have to deal with JD Vance. Why doesn't _this_ story ever get told?