With just a few days left in the 2024 campaign, polling expert Frank Luntz suggested that we have reached the limit of how much polling can actually tell us about who will win the presidential election.
Opinion polls are so close that it is impossible to determine the voters’ mentality. he told CNN. Meanwhile, voters still undecided at this late stage are unlikely to vote for Donald Trump or Kamala Harris.
“I don’t look at the polls as much anymore because they are fixed,” Luntz added. “I don’t think there are any undecideds left. There are still uncommitted candidates. There are still compelling candidates. But if you’re undecided, you reject both candidates. You don’t like them. You’re not going to vote for them .” .”
Instead of continuing to parse new polling data, he tries to figure out what the turnout will be and see how many young women in particular will show up, he explained.
If that demographic makes up a larger share of the overall electorate, then that’s great news for Harris and could “power” her, Luntz said.
That’s because the vice president has made abortion rights and women’s health a cornerstone of her campaign message.
The other voters he is closely watching are Latinos, who are voting in large numbers in the swing states of Arizona and Nevada, where they could be decisive.
Data from the first voting rounds show this Pennsylvania has seen a wave of Democratic women who did not vote in 2020, but will vote in this cycle. But in Arizona, Republican men are leading new voters to the polls early.
A X One factor in that is Trump’s rally last month at Madison Square Garden, which could have been that turned the race in Harris’ favor. During the event, comedian Tony Hinchcliffe called Puerto Rico “a floating island of trash in the middle of the ocean,” sparking a backlash among Latinos.
What further limits polls’ ability to predict the election is the track record from 2016 and 2020, when most polls undercounted Trump’s supporters.
One explanation was that pro-Trump voters were reluctant to tell pollsters how they voted. But Luntz doesn’t think that’s a factor in 2024.
“I don’t believe in this so-called shy Trump voter this time,” he said. “Trump people are not afraid to express their views. And in all the focus groups I’ve been in so far, Trump people are very loud, very vocal, very willing to acknowledge who they voted for or will vote for. and very willing to participate.”
After pollsters underestimated Trump in the previous election, a key question is whether they are now overcompensating and going too far to account for hidden Trump voters, “and that skews the data,” Luntz added.
This story originally ran Fortune.com
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