Back in 2016, Harry Enten, then at FiveThirtyEight, calculated the final polling error in every presidential election between 1968 and 2012. On average, the polls missed by two percentage points. In 2016, an American Association for Public Opinion Research postmortem found that the average error of the national polls was 2.2 points, but the polls of individual states were off by 5.1 points. In 2020, the national polls were off by 4.5 points and the state-level polls missed, again, by 5.1 points….
As of Oct. 10, The New York Times’s polling average had Kamala Harris leading Trump by three points nationally. That’s tight, but the seven swing states are tighter: Neither candidate is leading by more than two points in any of them.
Imagine the polls perform better in 2024 than they did in either 2016 or 2020: They’re off, remarkably, by merely two points in the swing states. Huzzah! That would be consistent with Harris winning every swing state. It would also be consistent with Trump winning every swing state. This is not some outlandish scenario. According to Nate Silver’s election model, the most likely electoral outcome “is Harris sweeping all seven swing states. And the next most likely is Trump sweeping all seven.”
Which is all to say: The polls can’t tell you the way in which they’re going to be wrong, nor by how much. But that’s what matters now.
Given what's at stake, this is quite insane, but that's where we are in this benighted country.
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