The Trump voter cannot be polled

“It should be easy,” says Don Levy, “because we have already polled this election once. We know what we did right and what we did wrong.” He is director of the Siena College Research Institute, the most accurate election pollster in the United States.

Together with The New York Times Levy regularly examines how Americans think about the economy, migration, abortion and, especially, the (un)popularity of their political leaders. Presidential elections are a nerve-wracking highlight. Because polls not only gauge and interpret, they also influence public sentiment. If an election result turns out very differently than the pollsters predicted, as in 2016 and 2020, they are blamed for this.

“Public interest in what we do has never been higher, but the willingness to participate has never been lower. That makes our work more complicated than ever,” says Levy. The difficulty, say he and Charles Franklin, chief pollster at Marquette University, is mainly in capturing the Trump voter. “In general, the response is lower than before, but specifically among Trump voters we are seen as part of the establishment that they oppose,” says Franklin. Levy’s pollsters deliberately do not make calls on behalf of the Times.

Franklin and Levy first want to emphasize that polls in March have no predictive value for an election in November. National percentages are illustrative, but elections are ultimately decided in only a handful of states. At this point, one thing is clear: Biden has a big problem. Voters see him as a much less suitable choice than in 2020, mainly because of his age. While they portray Trump – now prosecuted in four criminal cases – “in retrospect, they paint a rosier picture than they did when he was in power,” Franklin notes.

Siena’s latest research shows that Trump (47 percent) would currently win nationally over Biden (43 percent). In February, Marquette University rated Trump at 51 percent and Biden at 49 percent. Also in Wisconsin, the determining one swing states where Franklin has been polling for a decade now, Trump narrowly takes the lead.

It is extremely unusual that the Republican and Democratic presidential candidates are already known in March. Even before Super Tuesday, it seemed inevitable that Joe Biden and Donald Trump would face off again. After a series of primaries, almost all of which they won last Tuesday, their more and less famous challengers, including former UN ambassador Nikki Haley, dropped out of the race.

Also read
Nikki Haley is leaving the Republican race, but not the political stage

What is certainly special is that a sitting president, the incumbent, once again finds himself confronted by his predecessor. A man who has the same status within his own party and in terms of public fame. Also unique: never before have both candidates been so unpopular with voters. How do pollsters, who have already underestimated Trump’s electorate twice, deal with this?

Especially by doing their utmost to reach more likely Trump voters, they say. They have adjusted their methods and quotas for a certain type of voters – white men with only a high school diploma in specific regions. Because in both 2016, when Trump won against Hillary Clinton against almost all polls, and in 2020, when he lost much narrower to Biden than expected, they were under-polled.

These voters are not typical Republicans, as their success was more likely to be overestimated in the 2018 and 2022 midterm elections. “Trump activates a specific voter that we have difficulty reaching,” says Franklin. Levy does not believe in “shy Trump voters. If there was a stigma about voting for him, it is long gone.”

Overcompensate

Aren’t they afraid of exaggerating the Trump vote with their efforts? Out a recent inventory of the Financial Times it turned out that Trump did much worse in the Republican primaries than expected. Democrats speculate about ‘secret anti-Trump votes’ from Republican women who don’t even tell their husbands they prefer Biden.

Levy and Franklin don’t believe in that and mention primarypolls are notoriously unreliable. Sounding out votes for Trump remains more difficult than voting against him. “My biggest fear is that we will have to deal with one again this year nonresponse biasnot that we overcompensate,” says Levy.

What surprises both pollsters most is “the dark mood in the country,” as Franklin calls it. “Also Democrats are more somber than you would expect based on economic data.” Levy sees that “Trump’s ‘American disaster variables’: crime, immigration, inflation and national security resonate with a significant portion of the electorate.”

Biden has most to fear from the decline of his own popularity

They know one thing for sure: although the same names will be on the ballot as in 2020, this election will not be a repeat. Given the unpopularity of both candidates, the 2016 election seems a better point of comparison, when many voters wanted neither Clinton nor Trump.

It is therefore not Trump’s enthusiastic supporters that Biden should fear, but the decline of his own popularity. Left-wing voters who are unmotivated to vote for him can stay home or choose an alternative candidate, just like in 2016. “Because we don’t even know yet in which states those outsiders can and cannot participate, polls really can’t say anything meaningful about that.” say,” says Franklin.

Also read
Refuges for the protest voter who has no interest in Trump or Biden

To share





Email the editor