From the University of New Hampshire Survey Center[1]:
Biden, Trump Running Away With Primary Races in Vermont 2/22/2024 …
Less than two weeks away from the primary on Super Tuesday, former President Donald Trump holds a 30 percentage point lead over former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley among likely Republican Primary voters in Vermont.
And, indeed, Biden did end up dominating in Vermont on Super Tuesday. But how about Trump?
As of around 11:05 p.m., in Vermont, with 93% of expected votes reporting, Trump has 46% of the vote and Haley has 50%. The state marked a rare bright spot for Haley on Super Tuesday, where heading into early Wednesday morning, Vermont marked the only state she took. [ABC News]
The Chicago Daily Tribune fails the accuracy test. No Pulitzer for you.
I’m not aware of any incidents which would explain a 35 point swing in a poll over a two week period in the Trump-Haley race. Other polls followed by subsequent overperformances by Trump adversaries, both directly and indirectly, have been documented in primaries and special elections ever since the 2020 Presidential Election, although the Democratic debacle in Virginia in the 2021 elections does function as a counterexample. And then there’s the reports of underattendance at Trump rallies, his erratic behavior, various ongoing court cases and ludicrous claims, and the generally low quality of those politicos attracted to him.
So is Trump’s poll performance misleadingly strong? Tweedledee5 on Daily Kos sure thinks so:
And the kicker here? In an alarming recurring pattern, the Super Tuesday polling showed a huge systematic error favoring Trump, while his actual margin over Haley turned out to be much lower across the Super Tuesday states. Bringing that up because it’s raising questions about something weird going on to account for these huge differences between what pollsters seem to be finding, and what actual votes are showing, with the polls showing a consistent and very large systematic error, in form of a high (and very false) level of support for Trump that isn’t actually there when the votes are counted. Similar to the way Democratic candidates (and ballot initiatives) have been way overperforming what the polls seem to say. Of course, NYT/Siena being one of the worst since the 2022 mid-terms—with its bullshit prediction of a huge “red wave” in Nov. 2022 (one of the worst misses by any poll in years, in any election) and downplaying abortion, which turned out to be one of the two top issues for voters then, but it’s not the only one. As we’ll see below.
Is polling more and more difficult because the older generation, favoring Trump, will answer polls, while the younger, Biden-inclined[2] generation isn’t even reached by the pollsters? Which is funny, yes, since following the 2016 shocker, a favorite explanation for poll failures, which weren’t all that large, was that Trump supporters were lying to the pollsters.
Meanwhile, I’ve been saying all along that Biden’s margin of victory will increase, not decrease. Lately, it’s crept into my mind, like that mink into the rodent nest, that he might even pick up another entire State. Obviously, this is contingent on an absence of disasters, and improved messaging on the part of the Biden campaign.
That may be what is needed to kick off the sorely needed Reformation of the Republican Party.
1 Rated a 2.6/3 by FiveThirtyEight as I write this.
2 The idea that the younger generations will vote for the oldest candidate in history may strike some as funny, but has an odd tie-in to this post.
