Democrats fear pollsters are undercounting Trump

Senate Democrats are worried pollsters are once again undercounting the Trump vote and say Vice President Harris’s slim lead in battleground states, especially Pennsylvania, is cause for serious concern.

After getting shocked by Hillary Clinton’s upset loss in 2016 and surprised by then-President Trump’s stronger-than-expected performance in 2020, Democratic lawmakers are bracing themselves for another election night surprise.

They hope that Harris can overperform the polls herself by driving young voters and Black and Latino voters to the polls in big numbers, but acknowledge that whether a larger-than-expected pro-Harris coalition emerges is an untested hypothesis. 

“Polling has really been seriously damaged since 2016. And that’s one of the truths, is that Trump is going to be tough in Pennsylvania, and that’s absolutely the truth,” Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) said when asked whether he’s worried pollsters may be undercounting Trump’s support in his home state.

Democratic lawmakers are growing nervous that their party may once again feel lulled into a false sense of optimism amid polls showing Harris with small but consistent leads in three crucial states that make up the “blue wall”: Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

Sen. Raphael Warnock (D), who represents the swing state of Georgia, said it’s impossible to know who’s ahead at this point because many polls show Harris and Trump running neck and neck, within the margin of error.

“We know this election is going to be close. It’s going to be close in the battleground states, including Georgia, which is why I’m doing everything I can to make sure we put Georgia in our column,” he said. “The only poll that matters is Nov. 5, right?

“We talk about margin of error for a reason,” he said.

One Democratic senator who requested anonymity acknowledged both Clinton and President Biden were doing better in the polls against Trump in 2016 and 2020, respectively, than Harris is performing right now.

“That’s ominous. There’s no question that is concerning, but you’re working as hard as you can work, no matter what. My sense there’s not a lot more you can do than we’re already doing,” the lawmaker said.

The Democratic senator said pollsters have trouble gauging Trump’s support because many voters who support him may not want to interact with them or don’t want to speak candidly about their political views.

“The only thing I can come up with is that people do feel embarrassed,” the senator said. “Most of what he preaches, most of us have taught our children to try to not be that way on the playground. So there’s a certain amount of reluctance to admit I’m going to vote for somebody whose conduct I tell my children is wrong.”

A second Democratic senator, who requested anonymity to discuss skepticism about Harris’s lead, said, “I don’t think any poll right now means much of anything.”

“I’m surprised that people look back on the Trump economy delusionally as being so good, which I think is the major factor that supports his approval rating,” the lawmaker said of Trump’s resilience in the polls despite numerous legal setbacks and being heavily outspent by the Harris campaign.

If Harris performs as the polls — on average — predict, she will be elected president in November.

But Trump is within the margin of error in the most important battleground states, and he has a history of outperforming his polling averages, particularly in Midwestern states where his populist message appeals to blue-collar white voters.

Public polls had Trump trailing Biden by an average of 5 percentage points, consistently, during the final two months of the 2020 presidential campaign. But he ended up losing the key state of Pennsylvania to Biden by only 1.2 percentage points — 50 percent to 48.8 percent.

Likewise, public polls showed Trump trailing Clinton by between 3.5 points and 7 points in Pennsylvania during the final eight weeks of the 2016 campaign. Yet Trump ended up winning Pennsylvania despite never leading Clinton in any of the public polling averages of the Keystone State.

Political handicappers generally consider Pennsylvania, which has 19 electoral votes, a key state for Harris. If she loses there, then she would have to beat Trump in either Georgia or North Carolina — two states where the GOP nominee is hanging on to slim leads — to have a realistic chance of winning more than 270 electoral votes.

A New York Times/Philadelphia Inquirer/Siena College poll of likely voters in Pennsylvania conducted Sept. 11-16 showed Harris with a 4-point lead over Trump in the state.

But Republicans argue that poll undersampled Trump voters. Only 37 percent of the poll’s respondents said they voted for Trump in the 2020 presidential election, well short of the 48.8 percent he won in the state four years ago.

“I used to think it was incompetence. Now I think it’s part of the strategy. They’re trying to drive down enthusiasm. Why are you going to vote for somebody if you think they’re going to lose? And they’re trying to drive down fundraising and donations,” said a GOP pollster who argued that some media organizations are biased against Trump.

David Paleologos, the director of the Suffolk University Political Research Center, said it’s difficult for pollsters to predict who will actually vote in an election.

“We could be calling rural Pennsylvania today and a Trump voter could say, ‘I hate politics. I’m not going to vote.’ … But that person in four weeks could be very much animated if contacted by Trump or the NRA, and then they become a likely voter. That’s why they say polls are a snapshot in time,” he said.

Democratic lawmakers and pollsters acknowledge that new public polls showing Harris with slim leads over Trump in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Nevada and Wisconsin — or Trump with slim leads over Harris in Arizona, Georgia and North Carolina — don’t mean much six weeks before Election Day.

What’s alarming for Democrats is that Trump has a track record of outperforming the polls, especially in the Midwestern states Harris is counting on.  

“Figuring out the turnout is the hardest thing out there. This cycle there may be a surprise Trump vote and a surprise Harris vote,” Democratic pollster Celinda Lake said.

“I, too, share the concern that there are going to be some surprises. What accentuates my concern is when you poll people who have not voted in ’20 but are planning to vote today, they are disproportionately Trump voters,” Lake said.

“If you look at first-time voters who didn’t vote in ’20, they are leaning toward Trump and they’re very low information and they like his kind of style. And they like Elon Musk and they like a lot of things like that. I worry about that. I think it’s definitely a concern, and I think we just have to get enough margin to compensate for that,” she added.  

The good news for Democrats is that they have an edge over Republicans in registering new voters, as many young women in battleground states have become more interested in politics since the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which overturned the federal right to an abortion.

“The new registration has been disproportionately Democratic younger women, around the abortion issue,” Lake noted.

The challenge for the Harris campaign and other Democratic candidates will be getting those newly registered voters to cast early ballots and show up to the polls on Election Day.

“About two-thirds of the new registrants are female and are very advantageous to the Democrats, but we got to make sure they turn out to vote. They tend to be disproportionately pro-choice younger women. There’s been a real surge of them in North Carolina, and it’s one of the things really making North Carolina possible” for Harris, Lake said.

“I think it helps when you have an [abortion rights] initiative on the ballot, and I think it helps when you have a woman candidate on the ballot,” she added.

Several states have abortion rights-related measures on the ballot this fall, including Arizona, Florida, Montana and Nevada. Arizona and Nevada are presidential battleground states, and all four have competitive Senate races.