Stop reading national polls, the state numbers are where it’s at

During election years, I like to keep my morning routine. I wake up, prepare a cup of coffee, and then check the daily polls. Each morning, pundits dissect the newest batch of public polling information, giving insight into how the data is bound to shape the race. The difference between the way I read these numbers and others see them is simple — I don’t give consideration to national polls.

The massive amount of attention given to national polls has long humored me; If the 2000 election outcome was broadcast in the same way that daily morning polls are, we would all see blue font declaring, “Gore +1” suggesting that Al Gore had defeated George Bush. Marginal advantages in national support indicate nothing about the state of the race. With an Electoral College system, statewide support is the only valuable piece of information to indicate who holds a lead.       

{mosads}Historically, national polls have been used as tools to maintain the perception of a close election. In 2012, these polls had President Barack Obama narrowly edging out Mitt Romney by 0.7% heading into election night, casting tremendous doubt over the state of the race. Despite this perception of a nail biter, state polling painted a dramatically different picture.

Battleground states such as Colorado, Iowa, New Hampshire, and Pennsylvania all polled comfortably for Obama, making him the clear favorite. On election night Obama won reelection in a dominant performance, taking 332 electoral votes to Mitt Romney’s 206. While state-by-state surprises came in Florida and Virginia, the outcome of the race was never in question — Obama had a firm grasp on the presidency all along.       

As we look at the 2016 race, national polls have fluctuated between large leads for Clinton and small ones, giving a sense of unpredictability. The U.S.C/LAT poll sits as a consistent outlier, oftentimes showing Trump winning, or the race in a statistical dead heat. On first glance, the mixed information presents a close contest, unbeknownst who actually holds the advantage in the pivotal weeks before the election.

Despite this uncertainty, Clinton’s lead in the state polls has never wavered. In the two battleground states of Pennsylvania and Virginia, Clinton has held her spot at the top of the polls unchallenged since June. She currently holds an 8.6% and 7.4% advantage in the two states respectively.

Assuming Clinton will take states where she currently holds a 5% lead or higher in statewide averages, Clinton would hold 263 electoral votes, just seven away from the presidency. This would leave 112 electoral votes from eight combined tossup states on the table, five of which she is currently polling ahead in.

While the state of the race and subsequent polls are bound to change as the election unfolds, our outlook on these polls likely will not. Candidates, pundits, and voters alike will continue to debate the morning’s newest national polling numbers.

Despite this, it is important to remember that elections are not about the input of the nation; they are about the outcome of a select few states. So long as California votes solidly democratic and Oklahoma solidly republican, there is no need to factor them into national calculations that skew the results towards the middle.

In this, I challenge voters to do one thing when assessing the state of the presidential race: stop reading the national polls. Such that we have a democratic process rooted in statewide results, it only seems fitting that we exclusively value statewide polls when prognosticating the state of the 2016 election.

Note: the data in this piece was taken from RealClear Politics National and Statewide Voting Averages

Brian Denney works on local and federal campaigns based out of Southern California.

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