Shy Trump voters could skew polls again

(AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

Shy Trump voters have been a thorn in the side of pundits since the Donald first walked down the escalator in 2015.

And according to “New York Times” chief political analyst and sociologist Nate Cohnthey can do it again. On Sunday Time and Siena College released their final survey of seven battleground states, and the results were inconclusive.

In Arizona, Donald Trump leads Kamala Harris by four points and has a one-point advantage in Michigan. Harris, on the other hand, leads Trump by one point in Georgia and three in Nevada, North Carolina and Wisconsin. The two candidates are tied in what many consider the most important state in the election: Pennsylvania.

In his description of the results, Cohn stated that they did not “point to a relatively clear favorite” for several reasons, even if Harris may have been a little more pleased with this conclusion.

“On average, Ms. Harris did slightly better than in our last round of polls of the same states, but her gains were concentrated in states where she had previously struggled,” he wrote. “Meanwhile, the so-called “Blue Wall” (Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania) no longer looks as serious an obstacle to Mr. Trump as it once was. Ms. Harris’ standing in the Electoral College will not necessarily improve as a result.”

Con Also warned that Republican non-response bias may continue to skew the results, as it did in 2016 and 2020:

It’s hard to measure nonresponse bias—we weren’t able to reach these demographically similar voters, after all—but one metric I track from time to time is the share of Democrats or Republicans who responded to the survey after considering other factors.

In these latest polls, white Democrats were 16 percentage points more likely to respond than white Republicans. That’s more inequality than our previous surveys this year, and it’s not much better than our last surveys in 2020—even after the pandemic ended.

“This raises the possibility that polls may underestimate Trump again,” he concluded.

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