The Harris “Pole” Numbers

Donald Trump is having a pretty bad week

Five hours after ex-president Trump sneered that Vice President Harris was “dumb as a rock,” he posted that she has terrible “pole” numbers, misspelling the word “poll.” Yes, irony is now quite dead.

But on Tuesday, those same “pole” numbers showed Trump was wrong there, too. A new Reuters/Ipsos survey showed Harris now beating Trump by two points in a head-to-head match-up, and by four points in a multi-candidate race.

A separate Marist / NPR poll showed that, among those surveyed who indicated they were “definitely voting,” the race was tied in a head-to-head match and Harris was leading by two in a multi-candidate race.

What if anything can we glean from these? Today, I’ll provide some high level thoughts about what the polls likely do and don’t mean. I’ll  begin with my usual caveats about polls before discussing the shift in momentum they are now signaling and how this might affect the public narrative about the race.

All my usual caveats

Whenever I post or talk about polls, I get much of the same understandable pushback: Polls aren’t votes, polls aren’t accurate, so why are you still talking about polls?

Those first points are in fact valid. Polls definitely are not votes, and I much prefer to look at results from actual elections, where Democrats have consistently overperformed since the Dobbs decision came down in June of 2022.

And polls definitely aren’t accurate, meaning that they are not reliably predictive of final results, especially more than 100 days out. At best they are a fuzzy snapshot of public sentiment today, one that could be way off from the final tally. Taking the favorable Reuters/Ipsos poll as an example, even at 44 to 42 percent in favor of Harris, that implies a full 14 percent remain undecided, a huge group that both sides will target and which will largely determine the race.

I have to add at this point that the undecideds comprise much of the “Double Doubters” who don’t like either Biden or Trump. With Harris now entering the race in Biden’s place, this group will have an opportunity to ask itself whether it now favors Harris. We don’t know the impact of that yet, but in general the very fact they get to reconsider is not good news for Trump.

So why are you talking about the polls?

Fair question! If polls indeed are not accurate predictors of the future, why do we have them at all, and why on earth am I talking about them?

First, while polls can’t predict the outcomes, they can tell us a bit about which way the race is headed right now and who has the momentum today. Like a broken thermometer that can’t accurately tell you the temperature, the same poll viewed over time can at least indicate whether it’s getting relatively warmer or cooler. 

And there is no question that in the past three days, Harris is on fire and voters remain cool to Trump. 

Take the Reuters/Ipsos poll. That shows a shift toward Harris since the news of Biden’s withdrawal and her candidacy hit. The same poll taken on July 1-2 showed Harris losing to Trump by a point, and the same July 15-16 poll showed that she was tied with him. Now, she’s leading him by two points, or by four if third parties are included. That’s all indicative of a shift in voter sentiment.

Another thing that the polls seem to be telling us is that Trump may have hit his upper limit with voters. As Prof. Jason Johnson of Morgan State University noted, all the favorable news and coverage for Trump did not move the polling needle for Trump.

Trump had
An attempt on his life
Beat the documents charges
A new VP
A convention
His opponent drops out

And [h]is polling is about the same. That's a helluva week with little to show for it. No matter what happens w/ Harris it seems he's probably hit his ceiling.

Indeed, as commentator Bill DeMayo observed, it is rather telling that Trump’s opponent dropped out of the race, and yet he was immediately polling behind his new opponent.

That brings me to the second reason to talk about the polls: They can affect the public narrative quite deeply.

For months, that narrative has been that Joe Biden could not possibly win. That was untrue but still widely accepted. Bad poll numbers, especially those coming from internal Democratic pollsters, were signaling that Biden was in big trouble, and that was causing donor dollars to dry up and Democrats nationally to fall into despair.

Joe Biden did the honorable and selfless thing and bowed out, given how much the narrative had shifted. The narrative, after all, had become self-perpetuating and self-defeating.

Now, with the baton passed to Harris, that narrative has changed dramatically. From all corners—the base, the donors, the pundits and the press—the new narrative is that Trump is in trouble and definitely beatable.

Looking again at the Reuters/Ipsos poll, the question of age, once played with devastating effect upon Joe Biden by the Trump Campaign, has flipped like a Uno Reverse card just dropped. Now, according to that poll, 57 percent of registered voters agree that Harris, who is 59, is “mentally sharp and able to deal with challenges” while only 49 percent believe that about Trump. 

Trump’s campaign folks may regret that they made age such an issue in the campaign, only for Trump to have to face the same question alone. And Democrats can now level the same attack upon Trump without undermining their own candidate. After all, the Democratic Party at least acted like a functioning institution by urging Joe Biden to step aside for the good of the country. No such courage or self-awareness exists within the GOP. It is a cult, and no one dares question the fitness of the cult leader.

Don’t get cocky

Trump-affiliated pollsters like Tony Fabrizio are already warning that Harris will enjoy a “honeymoon period” of good poll numbers. He is hoping to blunt the effect of expected bad news and to limit her surge, especially within young, undecided voters.

Given this preparation, Fabrizio may know something. So I would not be surprised if Harris did enjoy further movement upward in the polls in the coming days. But this does not change some fundamentals in the race that, in my mind, leave it more or less a tie.

We should never forget that the 2020 polls had Biden leading going into Election Day, but the race wound up being far closer than any of us would have liked. Biden won states like Arizona, Georgia and Wisconsin by very thin margins. This will be a hard scrabble,  every-vote-counts election, especially in critical swing states. The last thing we need is overconfidence.

That said, it sure is nice to feel positive again about our chances, and to “hope scroll” instead of “doom scroll” on social media and through news headlines. But make no mistake: Given her late entry, the existing dynamics of the contest, and the advantage that the Electoral College grants to the GOP, Harris remains the underdog, even while she enjoys this lift. The GOP will spend the next 100 days attacking her, on everything from her record to her race. It will be ugly, and it will be brutal.

I’m already working on advice on how to counter those coming attacks, so stay tuned for that! In the meantime, enjoy the feeling of the Democrats coming together and the polls for once reflecting our strength and resolve.