The Morning of a Thousand Polls
It Could Give You Whiplash
I sat on a Twitter space late last night, waiting for midnight to hit when Marist’s new polls in the Rust Belt were set to drop. At some point, between clicking refresh on the page more than five times, I thought I’d completely lost control of my life and needed this election to end sooner rather than later.
The dopamine rush came again when I woke up this morning to see about a dozen more high-quality polls that had come out around sunrise. I felt like a little boy on Christmas morning and saw Santa had come.
First, I want to go over all the polling data over the last few days and then discuss what I think it shows:
Gallup did a poll to ask Americans if they identified more as a Republican or a Democrat. The poll found that 50 percent said Republican, while 45 percent said Democrat. This isn’t a particularly noteworthy poll; it doesn’t necessarily mean anything, but it’s just important to remember that the last time the GOP led in September of a presidential election was in 2004. Once again, it's not particularly important, but just interesting. The poll also has large swings, so the GOP may not be in the lead by November.
There were also a few polls in non-competitive states. The Siena Research Institute found that Harris led Trump in New York by just 12 points, 52 percent to 40 percent. This would make him the first Republican to get over 40 percent in New York since 2004 and could be critically important in saving the swing Republican House seats. At the same time a Public Policy Institute of California poll had Kamala leading Trump by 60-29 percent in the Golden State, basically in line with what Biden received in 2020.
As far as national and statewide polling, here’s the data based on what’s come in over the last few days:
