Polling data always comes with an asterisk in presidential election years — but this year, polling infographics should come with the sort of conspicuous disclaimers the surgeon general wants to add to social media.
The latest CNN/SSRS poll shows Vice President Kamala Harris pulling slightly ahead of former President Donald Trump in key battleground states, although she remains within the margin of error in Nevada. As one might expect, voters seem to trust Trump more on economic issues, however Harris outperforms her rival on the rather vague promise of “protecting democracy.”
So, maybe a statistical tie makes sense at this point in states such as ours that are full of independent voters.
Such close polling, however, shows that neither camp is about to “lock up” any of those much-needed votes at this point in the race. And while Democrats can embrace a sense of cautious optimism about Harris’ improving numbers in recent weeks, the clichéd caveat that “anything could happen” before election day seems more important than ever to consider.
After all, we don’t exactly live in “normal” political times. In just the last several months we’ve endured two highly anticipated conventions, a Democratic candidate swap, ongoing indictments against Trump and even an attempted political assassination.
As Nate Silver rightly notes, the last several months have been an unending series of major breaking news stories — each influencing voter sentiment in tangible ways. Up to this point, the presidential election cycle has effectively been an unending cavalcade of crisis communication campaigns, sensational headlines flashing on cable news chyrons and unyielding social media outrage over the issue du jour.
There’s little reason to think things will become less volatile in the days, weeks and months ahead.
On Tuesday, we’ll be subjected to the first Harris vs. Trump debate — which is likely going to have an outsized influence on voter sentiment given it’s the first time the two will be on the same stage. For Harris, the bar might be relatively lower than it otherwise would be, given President Joe Biden’s abysmal performance earlier this year. Coherent sentences, for example, would be a big improvement for team blue.
However, let’s not imagine she’s going to be capable of waltzing away with an easy victory. Historically, she has proven herself to be an unreliable improvisator, which is one of the reasons her campaign has largely shielded her from uncontrolled interactions with the press.
Against a focused and prepared Trump, such unreliability could be a problem. Then again, there’s little reason to be confident Trump will come to the debate focused and prepared. The nation might (rightly) remember how awful Biden was in the last debate, but Trump’s performance wasn’t exactly well received either.
In other words, Tuesday will be interesting — if you happen to be entertained by such cringeworthy political clown shows.
However, it’s not just the upcoming debate that is poised to confound pollsters and political prognosticators with fleeting changes to public opinion. Adding to the confusion is a palpable realignment of coalitions and interests within each party — a phenomenon that has been taking place for some years but is only now beginning to reveal itself in polling data.
This shift in historical political allegiances has been most noticeable on the right, where the Reaganite conservative movement of yesteryear’s GOP has largely been crowded out by populists, nationalists and nativists. Perhaps the most startling example of the party’s internal realignment was evidenced in July when Republicans surprisingly invited Teamsters president Sean O’Brien to speak at their national convention.
Democrats are feeling changes within their own party as well. Demographic allegiances have been evolving over the years, resulting in new challenges for the party’s strategists. For example, support for Democrats has been slipping among key minority voters in recent elections, with Harris being unable to reach the level of support Biden saw in 2020 among Nevada’s all-important Latino community.
As if such demographic and political realignments weren’t enough to confuse electoral models, the evolving nature of how voters interact with political news has complicated things even further. The days of William F. Buckley sitting down for a long-form conversation with Noam Chomsky have long been behind us — but so too are the days when Americans trusted the nation’s newsrooms to be objective and unbiased.
In a world where information is more easily accessible than ever before, much of the public has taken refuge in the conspiracies and biases of their own political echo chambers rather than face any objective news that might challenge their worldview. And it’s easy to see why: such ideological siloing is easier than ever with the plethora of social media influencers catering to partisan outrage in search for more followers.
In such an environment, it’s no wonder “misinformation” runs so rampant. After all, as Upton Sinclair famously said, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” Similarly, it’s hard to get political pundits with massive online followings to stray from their partisan talking points when their livelihood requires them to toe the line for their niche audience.
This influencer culture has, of course, seeped into how electoral campaigns operate. It has encouraged candidates to cater to the fast-paced nature of TikTok reels and Twitter memes rather than pound out detailed policy proposals — even if that means flip-flopping without explanation on countless issues.
In the end, all these cultural, demographic and political evolutions mean we now live in a “new normal” that is in constant flux. The parties are changing, voters are migrating more freely between them and the sort of political grifters that have always leeched off division and discord have found new levels of influence within the parties themselves.
Such dynamics inevitably lead to a highly volatile electoral landscape — one that is, increasingly, going to be difficult for pollsters to adequately capture months, or even weeks, ahead of election day.
As such, regardless of what the polls say after the debate, neither party should allow themselves to get too comfortable. After all, the notion that “anything could happen” between now and election day isn’t just a mere possibility — at the rate we’re currently going, it’s pretty much a guarantee.
Michael Schaus is a communications and branding expert based in Las Vegas, Nevada, and founder of Schaus Creative LLC — an agency dedicated to helping organizations, businesses and activists tell their story and motivate change. He has more than a decade of experience in public affairs commentary, having worked as a news director, columnist, political humorist, and most recently as the director of communications for a public policy think tank. Follow him at SchausCreative.com or on Twitter at @schausmichael.
