National Review continues to carry a torch for President Trump. Kyle Smith, for example, is talking up a couple of outlier polls:
The Trafalgar Group’s Robert Cahaly is an outlier among pollsters in that he thinks President Trump will carry Michigan, Pennsylvania, or both, and hence be reelected with roughly 280 electoral votes. (I explained his thinking here.) Last week another pollster, Jim Lee of Susquehanna Polling and Research, echoed some of Cahaly’s points about shy Trump voters being missed by pollsters. “There is definitely a submerged Trump vote,” Lee said. Asked for a prediction, he hedged a little but then predicted a Trump win: “I can’t call it. If the turnout is going to be what I think, Trump wins it.” …
In a recent interview for WFMZ, Lee elaborated, saying, “When pollsters get the results back and they look suspicious, or they should, because they’re showing one candidate with a double-digit lead in a state that was carried by one candidate by, you know, a point or two, they should realize something’s not right and that’s where the art of polling comes in.” Lee calls attention to what he describes as “garbage polls” showing a double-digit lead for Joe Biden in the past few weeks in Pennsylvania. He sees this as a replay of 2016 and adds, “I called on the American Association of Public Opinion Research to crack down on egregious polling to tighten standards for firms that clearly don’t understand the landscape of Pennsylvania.” (According to the FiveThirtyEight survey of pollsters, Franklin & Marshall is more reliable than Susquehanna.)
It’s fun to talk about embarrassed Trump voters dotting the landscape like kudzu, but I think there’s a lot of politicians and pollsters fooling themselves this time around. While some Republicans may be trying this ploy as a strategic matter – a bit of foolishness that may do more damage to their side than to Biden voters – there’s little reason to really believe Trump voters are embarrassed. After all, are the pollsters going to shame them if they say so? No professional pollster will betray any emotion beyond a bit of gratitude for answering the questions. The whole concept seems silly.
For my money, the two best applicable polls are the 2018 midterms, which saw Trump and his allies take a real beating in the House even as they gained a couple of highly unstable seats in the Senate, while Democratic accomplished gains in State legislatures such as Virginia’s, and the 2019 Wisconsin special election last spring, which saw a mediocre Republican voter turnout get beaten by an angry Democratic turnout that resulted in a Wisconsin Supreme Court shocker.
The last poll is coming, though. If you haven’t voted, get out and get it done!
