Well, statistics can certainly include polling.
The maxim has been reaffirmed during this election cycle. David Plouffe, a senior advisor to Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign and former campaign manager for President Barack Obama, acknowledged that the Harris campaign’s internal polling consistently did not show her with a significant lead. Plouffe also criticized some of the public polling in favor of Harris, labeling it as unreliable.
Plouffe mentioned, “We didn’t get the breaks we needed on Election Day.” He highlighted the discrepancy between the public polls released in late September and early October, which indicated a lead for Harris that was not reflected in their internal data.
I can’t say I was shocked by this statement. Not at all.
As evident to my ten dedicated readers, the early public polling showing Kamala Harris leading by more than two points appeared questionable from the start. I expressed skepticism about the Democrats’ optimism as early as July 31, 2024, before Harris even surged in the RealClearPolitics (RCP) standings. I raised concerns about the accuracy of public polling data on September 2 due to potential response bias. On September 21, I scrutinized the legitimacy of specific public polls, a sentiment shared by my typically pessimistic conservative friend, Cameron, who interestingly turned out to be right.
Now (pardon me for tooting my own horn), we all know that my assumptions were accurate. And once again, we see that the campaign polling is always going to be better than public polling because the campaign pollsters need to be accurate to keep their jobs, while the public polling can afford not to be so.
This shows the problem of a political observer relying solely on public polling. Public polling should be just one tool that, along with other things, can be used to tell us where we are in the electoral contest. But there should always be other things that we consider for the big picture.
For me, the big thing that I focused on was the nation’s troubles. Contrary to the bloviating from Joe Biden and Kamala Harris about Bidenomics, I knew that the economy was poor and that voters were especially hurt by inflation. As any student of history knows, inflation is a killer when it comes to the popularity of governments. For example, since some lefties just love to discuss the Nazis, they should be aware that the National Socialists became popular because the Weimar Republic that existed before them had a hyperinflation problem.
The border and the world chaos were the other two big problems in 2024 as well. Both had a direct impact on the voters, who experienced the rising crime rates (which were hidden by official crime statistics) and the criminal acts from those illegal aliens, and worried about the foreign conflicts and the resulting at-home effects of the world chaos, e.g., the pro-Hamas rioting.
Therefore, the idea that a member of the Biden-Harris administration would ever be securely and consistently ahead in this kind of environment was always patently ridiculous. Especially after Biden had been behind Trump in the public polling consistently from September 2023 until he was removed as the candidate.
And it wasn’t like Joe Biden or Kamala Harris were impressive public figures. At his best, Joe Biden had always been somewhat of a doofus, who was liked-but-not-respected in D.C., and now was very obviously senile. (He was no Bill Clinton.) And Kamala Harris was known among even Democrats for her laziness and her poor campaign skills.
The two also campaigned rather poorly, and they produced ineffective political ads. They talked up Bidenomics. Biden pretended he wasn’t senile. Harris ran solely on abortion and Trump being the devil. They never addressed what the swing voters were really concerned about, or did what they really needed to do, which was undermine Donald Trump’s presidential record from his first term.
A person who understands U.S. presidential elections and knows our history well would have expected that, under these circumstances, when this vice president was substituted in for this senile president, there might be a short burst of popularity for the vice president, as party partisans rallied around her and celebrated the removal of the unpopular president, coupled with a second-look by swing voters open to the change But this surge would not last indefinitely. To continue to build on that momentum, the vice president would be required by the swing voters to show that she was going to produce some change from the current poor situation. Harris never did.
Which meant that the idea that Kamala Harris was consistently ahead in the presidential race by two or more points made absolutely no sense.
One further point – Atlas Intel, Gallup, Rasmussen, and some other public pollsters are currently basking in the glow of 2024 accuracy. They certainly deserve it — this time around. However, in my experience, public pollsters may get things right for a while…before they don’t, as they are supplanted by the next, new public polling wonder. I well remember when Joe Zogby was praised as such a wonder and then later, when he wasn’t.
This is another reason to always keep in mind the political environment, and to not live and die by the public polls.
