Are the US elections really that close?

WASHINGTON DC, USA (AFP) – The United States is on the brink as polls show former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris will have one of the closest presidential races in history.

The largest polling stations show that the candidates are virtually deadlocked.

In the election states, poll aggregator FiveThirtyEight reported a 47.8% tie in Pennsylvania, nearly identical numbers in Nevada and just one point differences in Wisconsin, Michigan and North Carolina.

But these minimal fields may not tell the whole story.

“I wonder if it’s really that close?” asked W. Joseph Campbell, a professor at American University in Washington.

His question stems from pollsters’ problematic track record in recent elections and potential overreactions to past failures.

The political establishment was stunned in 2016 when Trump won despite trailing in the polls, while Joe Biden’s lead in 2020 was much smaller than predicted.

Republicans have only a slim majority in Congress in 2022, despite predictions of a “red wave.”

“The 2020 presidential election was collectively the worst for pollsters in 40 years and an embarrassment for many,” Campbell said.

Trump’s emergence on the political scene largely explains these polling failures. His number of supporters was consistently underestimated in 2016 and 2020, prompting polling companies to adjust their methodologies.

History offers an intriguing parallel: In 1980, opinion polls showed incumbent President Jimmy Carter neck-and-neck with Ronald Reagan. Reagan ultimately won by 10 points, taking advantage of a late surge, while Carter lost support for a third-party candidate.

“I’m not saying this will be a 2024 model, but it’s something to keep in mind,” Campbell added.

Leading poll analysts have openly acknowledged these problems.

“No, the polls cannot be trusted… The candidate leading in the polls cannot be confidently assumed to win,” Nate Cohn wrote. New York Times chief policy analyst and director of the poll.

Cohn explained that social scientists are working to correct systemic biases that have emerged in the Trump era.

“It is difficult to overstate how traumatic the 2016 and 2020 elections were for many pollsters. For some, another underestimation by Trump could pose a serious threat to their business and livelihood.”

But he warned that by adjusting methods to better capture Trump voters, pollsters may now be underestimating Harris.

“Overall, these changes provide cause for cautious optimism about improved accuracy, but there are no guarantees,” Cohn concluded.

Some experts suspect that social scientists may fall prey to groupthink, or “herd mentality,” by adjusting results that deviate significantly from the consensus.

Professors Joshua Clinton and John Lapinski spoke about this. NBK news: “Polls show not only a surprisingly tight race, but an incredibly tight race.”

They suggest that “a risk-averse pollster with a five-point lead in a race he believes to be close may decide to ‘adjust’ the results so that they are closer to what other polls show in order to out-of-bounds polls did not negatively impact their reputation…”

This, they say, raises a crucial question: “Will 2024 be as close as 2020 because our politics are stable, or will the 2024 polls look like the 2020 results only because of the decisions government pollsters are making?”