DemDaily: Monoriting The Mood of The Electorate
September 20, 2024
At 45 Days Out, Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump are running neck-n-neck in both national and battleground state polls.
Following the change at the top of the ticket 61 days ago, Democrats received a bump -- four to seven points in some states -- with post-convention polling averages showing Harris barely pulling ahead or even with Trump in the top seven battleground states.
While Harris' dominant performance in the September 10 debate may have provided her a marginal bounce in national horse race polls, there has been little shift in the key swing states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
Virtually all numbers put the two candidates within the margin of error of each other.
| A poll is a research survey of public opinion based on a particular sample, designed to represent the views of an entire population by interviewing a random sample of people within that population. |
Opinion polling is a critical mainstay of politics and the most effective tool, done correctly, for explaining the factors that influence an election and the progress of candidates in a race.
At this point in the presidential election, polls serve as a crucial guide for campaigns and the public -- providing a daily snapshot of the mood of the electorate.
Although polling is based on mathematical calculation, it is both art and science. The methodology, sampling and the data analysis are science. The interpretation and survey questions are art.
The survey language, number and order of the questions is crucial to avoid influencing the results of the poll. A sample size of at least 500 for a state and 1,000 for a national poll is necessary for a credible result.
| The margin of error (MOE) measures the effects of chance and uncertainty between the sample and population and is defined as the radius of a 95% confidence interval for a particular statistic. A ± 3.2% MOE, like that of the September 15-17 YouGov/The Economist poll that shows Kamala Harris leading Donald Trump 49%-45%, means Harris' vote could be as much as 52.2% or as little as 45.8%. |
While a polling average is meant to provide a consensus figure from a sampling of surveys, the concept itself is counter-intuitive. Most averages encompass non-partisan and potentially biased partisan polls, are drawn from a range of methodologies and often cover as many as six weeks -- a lifetime in campaigns.
To their credit, analysts at FiveThirtyEight weigh or adjust their average based on the date, sample size, methodology, and the pollster.
Victory, however, will not be measured in the national spotlight, but in the battleground state surveys.
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Sources: The Hill, FiveThirtyEight, Emerson College
