When the Polling Is Worse Than 'Damn Lies'

The old saying, supposedly made by Mark Twain (perhaps quoting Benjamin Disraeli), goes – “There are three types of lies: lies, damn lies, and statistics.”  

Well, statistics can certainly include polling.

And so, we have learned this maxim anew this election cycle. David Plouffe, a senior advisor to Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign and the former campaign manager for President Barack Obama, admitted that the Harris campaign’s internal polling never had her ahead substantially, and that some of the pro-Harris public polling was just atrocious.

“We didn’t get the breaks we needed on Election Day,” he said. “I think it surprised people, because there was these public polls that came out in late September, early October, showing us with leads that we never saw.”

I can’t say I was shocked by this statement. Not at all.

As all ten of my readers know, the public polling that showed Kamala Harris ahead by more than two points always seemed very suspicious to me very early on. I first talked about the “irrational exuberance” of the Democrats back in July 31, 2024, even before Harris took the RealClearPolitics (RCP) lead. I first mentioned the dubiousness of the public polling numbers showing her ahead in the RCP and the likely response bias problem on September 2. And I first wrote specifically about which public polls were suspect on September 21, when I introduced my normally depressed conservative buddy, Cameron. (He may be a doomer, but he eventually got it 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.