Most campaign polling is over at this point in the race, Blizzard said, and legitimate firms have shifted to using their data to make decisions about advertising and other resource allocation.
What experts find more worrisome than bad actors looking to manipulate the narrative is how few people understand that a point or two lead is a statistical tie that can go either way.
Cheery, the media and public affairs professor, said the press plays a significant role in this conversation because polling stories are easier to feed audiences.
She said more emphasis is needed on the consequences of Harris and Trump’s policy differences.
Rather than making predictions, Cheery said she focuses her students on grassroots conversations among voters about the stakes of the White House race and the ways people can be engaged in the democratic process over entertainment-styled coverage about who will win.
“It’s not that I don’t think polls have a place in this political discourse, but oftentimes they are so myopic,” she said. “Especially when we’re really talking about numerous variables that are going to come into play in people’s choices and for people who may say, ‘all the polls said (Trump) was going to win, and he didn’t—it was
About 34 million Americans have voted early already in 2024, with Democrats holding a slight edge, according to the University of Florida Election Lab , which tracks the numbers daily.
It shows roughly 41% of votes cast have come from registered Democrats, versus 35% from registered Republicans, for instance. But those who have measured the American voter’s mindsets for years say there are perils with diving too deep into early voting data as well.
For starters, much of the early voting data is based upon states where people register by party. Another caveat is that the baseline comparison is the 2020 election, when ballot access was expanded for the first time in response to the global COVID-19 pandemic.
Cathy J. Cohen, a political science professor at the University of Chicago, has been surveying Black and Hispanic voters for months as part of GenForward, a youth project at the college .
The average American doesn’t realize the limitations or nuances of polling data, she said, including sample size, demographic representation and how the survey’s questions are worded and ordered. All impact each survey’s result, Cohen said.
“There’s a big difference and a big gap between people answering a survey and people putting on their coat, getting in a car, taking the bus, waiting in line and making sure they’re registered to cast a vote,” Cohen said.
Instead of paying attention to possible outcomes, political observers should focus on trends across an election cycle. But that hasn’t stopped other groups and outfits from filling that void as more established firms appear to be taking a step back in 2024.
Many offshore betting markets, such as Polymarket, the world’s largest crypto trading platform , have been cited by Trump and his allies – with predictions that the Republican will win a second, non-consecutive term as president. One French trader reportedly bet a total of $28 million across four different accounts on the GOP nominee returning to power.
Joshua Barton, a spokesman for BetOnline.ag, said betting on U.S. elections on everything from who will win to turnout levels has skyrocketed in popularity over the past decade.
“As far as the amount wagered, it will eclipse what the Super Bowl does because there are so many big bettors that come in they want a stake on who’s going to win this election,” Barton said in an interview.
Some may never wager on anything else for another four years, he said, but participants want to have action on the outcome.
It’s still murky how much these and other yardsticks – such as the stock market ‘s levels ahead of presidential elections – can predict who might prevail between Trump and Harris. But it concerns Cohen and other academic experts who say polling should be more about identifying how Americans are thinking, rather than fortune-telling or money-making.
“They can be used to give some sense of a prediction, but I would be leery of weighting too much of our sense of what’s going to happen based on polls,” she said.
“It’s an iffy, dangerous business when you’re talking about human behavior.”
— USA TODAY:
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