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WASHINGTON – If polls are any guide – and there are many questions about them – Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump is in better shape now than he was at this time in 2020 and in his winning White House campaign of 2016.
Yes, Trump trails Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris in most polls. But the all-important caveat is that he’s down against the incumbent vice president by smaller margins than he faced in his first two general elections – both of which saw him score higher with actual voters than the ones who responded to pollsters.
Certainly, Republicans are counting on what some pollsters have called the “hidden Trump vote,” although pollsters also say there’s no certainty that group still exists. During a rally Wednesday in Reading, Pennsylvania, Trump claimed to have a poll showing him up 3 percentage points in the Keystone State, “which probably means 10.”
The Trump campaign, which lost the 2016 popular vote to Democrat Hillary Clinton by a little more than 2 percentage points but won enough states to prevail in the Electoral College, also follows the theory that the closer the national polls in 2024, the better his chances to win more electoral votes.
That’s not a given, the pollsters said.
During this cycle, pollsters have changed their methodologies, in part to account for the “ hidden” Trump voters; including people who plan to vote for him but don’t want to say it publicly, or other supporters who are hard to find via traditional polling methods like telephone calls. Also, different groups of voters are showing more signs of increased participation in the election because of new issues, from anti-abortion laws to the rising cost of living.
“There are fundamentals in question that no one can answer until Election Day,” said pollster Frank Luntz.
Also, the national polls are less important than individual state polls, and they’re pretty much tied as well. Most polls are well within the margin of error in the seven key battleground states: Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Georgia, Arizona, Nevada, and North Carolina.
The only thing you can say for sure is that the seven swing states are all really close,” said Republican pollster Whit Ayres. “They’re all effectively tied.”
As of Friday, the Real Clear Politics average of recent national polls give Harris a 1.8% lead over Trump.
At this time four years ago, Democratic nominee Joe Biden had a lead of 10.3 percentage points over then-President Trump in the RCP national average; Biden won the popular and electoral votes by much smaller margins. In 2016, Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton led the RCP national average by 6%.
Both of those elections were much closer.
Back in 2016, Clinton won the popular vote over Trump by 48.2% to 46.1% (the rest of the votes were scattered among third-party candidates, notably Libertarian nominee Gary Johnson and Green Party nominee Jill Stein). Trump, however, won the Electoral College by a margin of 304-227 (plus seven “faithless electors” who voted for other candidates).
Four years later, Biden won the popular vote over Trump by a bigger margin, 51.3% to 46.9%. He also took the Electoral College by 306-232.
Simon Rosenberg, a Democratic strategist who studies data, said pollsters have corrected previous methodology errors. He also noted that Republican candidates for the U.S. House and Senate underperformed polls in the 2022 midterm elections, and that Trump himself underperformed polling in this year’s Republican presidential primaries.
Harris and the Democrats are just as likely to have the hidden vote this time around, he said.
“The election is really close,” Rosenberg said. “Everything is in the margin of error … But because we have meaningful financial and ground advantages, we are still more likely to pull it out.”
