I don't think that's the case.

There was a video, I don't remember quite by who, that pointed out the flaws in Fivethirtyeight's methodology. But here is one clear example.

https://cdn.atlasintel.org/9e0da6ea-7e9c-498c-89e3-511bd7344cd0.pdf

This is the results of an Atlas Intel poll. They have a 2.7 star rating on Fivethirtyeight. According to this poll, Kamala Harris is actually winning men in Arizona by about 12 points, but losing women by 12. She is losing black voters 60 to 40%. In Michigan, the male vote is almost dead even, but Trump is ahead by 4 points because he is winning among women by 10%. Among those who choose not to identify their gender, Jill fucking Stein has 54% of the vote, Trump 48%, and Harris 4%. In North Carolina, Harris is actually winning by 3, and her advantage comes almost solely from men, as women are dead even. In Pennsylvania Trump is winning because he is up by about 5 points among women, and winning 18-29 year olds by 10 points. Trump is also getting 46% of the black vote, up from 7% according to 2020 exit polls. 

Again, this is a fairly highly rated pollster, the 22nd best according to Fivethirtyeight and should be influencing the models. Whether or not Kamala Harris will win, it is almost guaranteed that these polls are total horseshit. Whether it is deliberate or just incompetence I can't say, but there are definitely problems with the polling. The fact that the crosstabs are so wildly off yet the averages are still somewhat close smells of conspiracy to me. I think the problem with the aggregators is that they rely purely on data and I'm not sure if there is any human just looking through and saying "wait that's definitely fucked". 

Update: The US Election Day is 23 days away. Mark your calendars.

The thing is, the article you're posting actually presents great news for the Harris campaign.

If we take it at face value, about half of black potential voters say they are definitely voting, and another 30% or so are very likely. That would be historical black turnout. Non-white turnout was about 58% in 2020 for comparison. 

Of course, that probable is not what's going to happen. Turnout may be higher, but that's a pretty drastic shift. It may be that people just felt pressured to say in the poll that they are very likely to vote even when they aren't.

Assuming the turnout isn't as high as claimed, who is more likely not to vote? History says more likely the black men will be the ones not voting as black women have always voted at higher rates. Not only that, but with the first black female president at the head of the ticket and the overturning of Roe v. Wade, it seems likely that to the extent turnout does exceed 2020, it would be more likely that black women will make up the lion's share of the increase.

I suspect that at the end of the day, the black male vote will be more similar to 2020 exit polls than they are suggesting. And I suspect there will be higher turnout among black people in general, so even if Trump does get a slightly higher percent, it will be a net gain for Harris.

I'm not trying to say that Harris has this in the bag, but there does seem to be a tendancy by many, including myself, to get skittish at every slightly negative sign. And, I do think that to some extent, this is something encouraged by many parties. By swing state democrats in the lower ballot to get more funding, from Republicans trying to inflate Trump's ego and lay the groundwork for their "election was stolen" argument, and from news outlets because a close race sure is a better story. 

I'm not saying it isn't close, I'm just saying have plenty of grains of salt at hand for the next three weeks. 

True, the article is about black voters. I'm just wondering about the old white male vote. However older generations are pretty set in their voting patterns regardless of who is on the ballot. And younger generations will / should identify more with Harris/Walz.

I'm just hoping the gap will be big enough to quickly quash any demands for recounts and other nonsense.

Well, Hillary came close, just didn't have the right votes in the right place.

So, the question is if Kamala can do a little better than Hillary. And I think she can.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/06/upshot/polling-methods-election.html#

Here is an interesting article that kind of explains some of what we're seeing. It is about how many pollsters are using weighting by recall results, which is explained better in the article. Essentially, there is a concerted effort among legitimate pollsters to weigh the data in such a way that will prevent a Trump underestimation the likes of which happened in 2016 and 2020.

The problem with this is that the weighing is based on the assumption that turnout will be similar to 2020, and so it skews the data to pretty closely reflect the 2020 results. The weighting process makes it really hard to come up with results that vary very much from the last election. That's why we really are seeing in the most part results that are very similar to 2020.

In other words, to my understanding, they are trying to ensure their sample reflects the 2020 electorate. The only way the polls will shift very far from that result is if there are people changing their minds. And... really, it's hard to see that happening much. It's pretty clear that nothing Trump says or does will dissuade many people, or conversely that he's winning over tons of new voters. 

For example, the Marist poll which does use weighting has Trump at a 4% lead in Florida. Trump won the state by 3.2 in 2020. In the times poll, which does not use weighting, the result is Trump winning by 14%. I don't think Trump is winning by 14%, but I also think it's very unlikely that he's winning by only 4%. The 2022 election results and our eyes and ears would tell us that we would expect Florida to be more republican than it has been in the past. In this case, the weighting actually may be hurting Trump, but in any states that may be getting bluer, the opposite will be true. 

So, both methodologies have their flaws. The good news, assuming you are not a Trump supporter, is that there is not likely to be a drastic underestimation of Trump as there was, particularly in certain states like there was the last two elections. Tying into what we were talking about before, it also seems clear that there are low quality polls designed to show Trump performing well. There were also some of those in 2020, but those were kind of washed out by the fact that Trump was being underrated in more legitimate polls. If we assume that the more legitimate polls are not underestimating Trump and there are polls overrating him, then the picture changes quite a bit.

So, at the very least, this explainst why we shouldn't judge 2024 polls the same way we did in 2020. They are far less likely to be underrating Trump. The only way they would do so is if Trump has a massive surge from where he was in 2020, and I just don't see that happening. It is possible though that the polls are underrating Harris. My personal opinion is that Harris is a stronger candidate than Biden was, and that Trump is a bit weaker than he was in 2020. Time will tell.

Mehdi On Muslim Voters And An INCONVENIENT Election Truth



Great reasoning, hopefully it helps. He doesn't outright endorse Harris, but makes clear what you'll be voting for otherwise.

He couldn't state it more clearly.

Last weekend I learned from Trump that foreigners call the USA "occupied America" now. But nobody has ever used that term outside of the USA. Did Trump lie?