Currently, most polls for the presidential race have Donald Trump in the lead and Joe Biden trailing. For a variety of reasons, these polls are (mostly) meaningless at this point.
First, U.S. public opinion polls have been severely skewed for several consecutive election cycles. Since Donald Trump's surprise election in 2016, U.S. pollsters have claimed that the problem has been resolved, but that remains to be seen. And actually, polling has some issues that need to be addressed.
Telephone surveys were once considered the highest quality survey. However, with the rise of Donald Trump, people have become more comfortable revealing their true voting intentions in online polls. Weighting the raw data presents another challenge. Experiments have shown that when pollsters were given the exact same raw data collected in the field, they got different results, including different winners.
It has also become common in the industry to look at the average of multiple polls. However, this practice assumes that sample size is the primary factor affecting poll quality and that polling organizations control for all other factors similarly. That may not necessarily be the case.
Also, the US presidential election de facto It's not a national election, it's a state-by-state election. Fewer polls are conducted in key battleground states, and the issues outlined above are just as important there.
In addition to all the questions about how to vote, there are also questions about how to interpret the results. At this point, with seven months until the election, it doesn't really matter whether the candidate is two points up or down. There is a margin of error to consider, and a lot will happen between now and the election. By then we will know how people view the economy, how the wars in Ukraine and Gaza will play out, who will come to the polls and cast their votes, and how third-party candidates will enter the election. We don't know if it will have an impact or what the public health or legal issues will be. Candidates will compete against each other.
There is also the issue of herds among experts. Everyone on TV was saying that Hillary Clinton would win (2016), that there would be a mass rejection of Trump in the election (2018), that the presidential election was not far away (2020), or that the Democratic Party It takes courage to go against the mainstream to submit to the House of Commons (2022) when you say it has no chance of holding up.
John Cherry
Currently, Trump is leading in most polls, but this may simply be because polling agencies have adjusted their ratings after years of underestimating Trump, or the media's main focus at the moment is on incumbent Biden. It might be for a reason.
Some might think it's better to be consistently ahead in the polls than to be behind, but based on my experience as a campaign worker, I don't think so. Candidates typically make bold moves when they're under pressure, not when they're comfortably ahead. In that sense, early results in surveys can be the sweet poison that puts campaigns to sleep when they should be taking decisive action. For example, Donald Trump urgently needs to implement a comprehensive plan to reduce his popularity and reach unstable voters. But there may not be enough pressure to do so, as opinion polls show him leading due to a very loyal base of supporters.
Candidates and their staffers have a love-hate relationship with polls. Once you are satisfied with the result, you will forget all the limitations. If you don't like the results, ignore it completely. The truth is often somewhere in the middle, and current polls generally point to a close race.
What should concern Biden about the results of the polls is the underlying power dynamics they reveal – not about who respondents will vote for, but about the direction of the country. I am also writing in a new article) book, defeat the incumbent). The answers to these questions are consistently negative and work against the incumbent. Issues of ownership are also a challenge for Biden. Voters now trust President Trump by wide margins on almost every issue.
Finally, the big difference between current polls and four years ago is Biden's favorability rating. In 2020, he had a net positive favorability rating, which was quite a surprising accomplishment considering the circumstances. He is now viewed as negatively by voters as Trump.
Neither candidate is comfortable right now, but they have an opportunity to assess the other's weaknesses. At this point, it's clear we'll see how voters respond to testing attack ads, and I believe that's what's happening right now. Regardless of the outcome of today's polls, it is just one of many factors that will determine the election.
Dr. Louis Perron is a global political consultant and author of the following books: Defeating the Incumbent: Proven Strategies and Tactics to Win Elections.
The views expressed in this article are the author's own.
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