Presidential campaigns can turn on a dime.
And the events of the last month are giving Americans whiplash.
Now Donald Trump was mad as hell when he saw these bad new polls.
New York Times polls shift to Kamala Harris
For the last year, the New York Times/Siena polls of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin favored Donald Trump.
But three weeks after Democrats staged a coup to force Joe Biden out of the race and swapped in Kamala Harris, the polls shifted dramatically.
Harris now leads Trump in all three “must win” blue wall states by 50-46 percent, which is outside the margin of error.
🇺🇲 2024 GE: NYT/@SienaResearch
PENNSYLVANIA
🟦 Harris: 50%
🟥 Trump: 46%
—
🟦 Harris: 46%
🟥 Trump: 44%
🟨 RFK Jr: 4%
🟪 Other: 2%
—
Senate
🟦 Casey (inc): 51%
🟥 McCormick: 37%
⬜ Undecided: 11%
——
WISCONSIN
🟦 Harris: 50%
🟥 Trump: 46%
—
🟦 Harris: 49%
🟥 Trump: 43%… pic.twitter.com/YxsIJaXKSA— InteractivePolls (@IAPolls2022) August 11, 2024
Harris’ path to the White House requires winning all three Rust Belt states.
Are these polls accurate?
Well-respected strategists on both the Left and the Right raised an eyebrow at the results of the Times/Siena polls and wondered if they might be the result of response bias.
Response bias is when one side is riding high after good news and is more likely to respond to polls.
This is why candidates get a bounce out of their nominating convention that quickly begins to fade.
Conservative Ryan James Girdusky looked at the crosstabs, which showed strange results among groups normally favorable to Trump, and theorized that older liberal women – Harris’ base – were the ones answering pollster’s phone calls.
“The NY Times/Siena polls are very high quality but I see some very big problems: Trump isn’t losing seniors by 12 Harris isn’t tied with white voters Trump’s margin with non-college whites is in the 30s, not 13. I’d guess there’s some over sampling among older liberal women,” Girdusky wrote on social media.
Former Obama chief strategist David Axelrod agreed, saying the internal polls that are high quality – the Harris campaign and from the DNC – showed Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin as tied races.
“As for NYT polls in PA, MI and WI today, some of the internal numbers seem improbable–42% for Harris among non-college whites, for one eg. If you adjust for them, you’re probably looking at basically tied races (maybe a tick better for Harris in WI), which is where most, private, high-quality polling has them,” Axelrod posted on X.
Donald Trump also weighed in, claiming the Times’ polls were as biased against him as their news coverage.
“The Failing New York Times, which is a crooked newspaper run by a Radical Left group of Lunatics, is losing readers at a record level. Their stories about me are highly inaccurate, and their polling is even worse. They are a big reason for the DECLINE OF NEW YORK CITY, which the entire World is watching with shock and sorrow! Its only hope is that I get elected President. I will fix it, and fix it fast!” Trump wrote.
Harris has her nominating convention next week.
If response bias is truly driving her rise, then by Labor Day the polls should revert to a tied race.
