Washington:
The United States is on the edge as polls indicate one of the closest presidential races in history between former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris.
Major polling outlets are showing the candidates in a virtual deadlock.
In battleground states on the eve of the election, polling aggregator FiveThirtyEight reported a 47.8 percent tie in Pennsylvania, almost identical numbers in Nevada, and just one-point differences in Wisconsin, Michigan, and North Carolina.
However, these narrow margins may not provide the full picture.
“I wonder, is it really this close?” questioned W. Joseph Campbell, a professor at American University in Washington.
His inquiry stems from the troubled track record of pollsters in recent elections and a potential overreaction to past failures.
The political establishment was surprised in 2016 when Trump won despite trailing in polls, and Joe Biden’s victory margin in 2020 was much narrower than predicted.
In 2022, Republicans only secured a slim Congressional majority despite forecasts of a “red wave.”
“The 2020 presidential election was collectively the worst for pollsters in forty years and an embarrassment for many,” Campbell stated.
Trump’s impact on the political landscape largely explains these polling inaccuracies. His supporters were consistently underestimated in 2016 and 2020, leading polling companies to adjust their methodologies.
– ‘Traumatic for pollsters’ –
History presents an interesting parallel: In 1980, polls showed incumbent Jimmy Carter neck-and-neck with Ronald Reagan. Reagan ultimately won by 10 points, benefiting from a late surge while Carter lost support to a third-party candidate.
“I’m not saying that will be the model in 2024, but it is something to keep in mind,” added Campbell.
Leading polling analysts openly admitted to these challenges.
“No, you can’t trust the polls… You can’t safely assume that the candidate leading in the polls will win,” wrote Nate Cohn, the New York Times chief political analyst and polling director.
Cohn explained that pollsters are working to address systemic biases that emerged during the Trump era.
“It’s difficult to overstate how traumatic the 2016 and 2020 elections were for many pollsters. For some, another underestimation of Trump could pose a significant threat to their business and livelihood.”
However, he cautioned that while adjusting methods to better capture Trump voters, pollsters might now be underestimating Harris.
“Overall, these changes suggest a case for cautious optimism regarding better accuracy, but there are no guarantees,” Cohn concluded.
Some experts suspect that pollsters may be falling prey to groupthink, or “herding,” adjusting results that deviate significantly from the consensus.
Professors Joshua Clinton and John Lapinski cautioned NBC News: “State polls are not only showing an incredibly tight race but also an improbably tight race.”
They propose that “a risk-averse pollster who obtains a 5-point margin in a race they believe is tied may opt to ‘adjust’ the results to align more closely with what other polls are indicating, lest their outlier poll negatively impacts their reputation…”
This raises a crucial question: “Will 2024 be as close as 2020 because our politics are stable, or do the polls in 2024 resemble the results of 2020 solely due to the decisions made by state pollsters?”
(Apart from the headline, this article has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
