2024 US Election Odds Before Debate Night: Is Trump Polling Bump Accurate?

After a New York Times/Siena poll represented Donald Trump’s best national poll in weeks, there’s renewed panic in Democratic ranks. With certain models shifting Republican and claims that low-quality Republican polls are “flooding the zone,” has there been an accurate movement in 2024 U.S. election odds before the first Trump vs. Kamala Harris debate Tuesday night?

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2024 US Election Odds Tracker

2024 US Election Odds Shift Towards Trump

A month ago, Kamala Harris was a comfortable favorite in 2024 US election odds. She was at an implied 59% chance to win on August 11th but now sits six points lower.

There is a considerable improvement in Donlad Trump odds in at least one prominent model because, after a decade of every Republican calling him a hack, Nate Silver has become every Republican’s best friend in recent weeks. Between his decision to build in a means of adjusting polling for a convention bounce and some potentially dubious poll weightings, Silver’s model has been very favorable to the GOP in recent days. 

The combination of Silver’s model showing ever-increasing chances for Trump and the Times dropping Trump’s best national poll in a while, Democrats are freaking out. But it’s not entirely clear if it’s worthwhile. Yes, there has been a run of mediocre polls for Kamala Harris in recent weeks. But almost all of her bad polls, other than the Times poll, have been from either methodologically dubious pollsters or flat-out partisan ones.

Flooding The Zone?

In 2022, one of the reasons that Democrats beat their polls across many key races was that polling averages overestimated the value of a handful of pollsters who had done well in 2020 (or were new and untested) but were not traditionally known as good pollsters. Some, most notably Trafalgar, were explicitly partisan, but others were nominally neutral. Their 2022 polls caused a GOP surge in late swing state polling.

That surge was fake. In nine at least semi-competitive Senate races, Democrats beat their polls in all nine, in part because of the preponderance of these polls.

Now, the same thing is happening here. A combination of media executives’ choices and the fact there’s a Presidential debate this week means there’s been little high-quality swing state polling released. CNN and YouGov have released some, but outside of them, there’s been almost all partisan right-wing polls or Emerson, which overcorrected its Democratic bias in 2020 by swinging to a pro-GOP bias in 2022 and 2023.

What’s interesting about the polls is that even with the consternation, she’s still winning.

Electoral Map

If the election were held today and the polls were completely accurate, Kamala Harris would win.

No matter what polling average you use – 538, Nate Silver’s, or RCP’s – Harris has a lead right now in states adding up to 270+ Electoral College votes. For all the noise around this election, if the polls are right, Harris is ahead.

Now, some of those are rather small leads, but given that the averages have seen all of this polling from Trafalgar and Patriot Polling and Wick and whatever other drivel, it seems hard to both flood the zone and build in a 2020-style polling miss. That is if intellectual honesty is still worthwhile.

Many expressing doom are assuming that Harris needs to have a lead big enough to survive a big miss, which is fundamentally false.

The polling industry is full of people with big financial incentives to get this right. The idea that the polling industry is just blindly driving off the cliff with the same biases as 2020 is ludicrous. Yes, of course, it is possible that the legacy polling industry fails a third time in a row. But it is hard to argue it is in any way likely.

The Times poll Monday had a more conservative electorate than it did in 2020, and it’s adjusted its policy of including “partial” calls in its samples to get people who start the poll, include who they’re voting for, and don’t finish the poll. Both of those adjustments make Trump’s numbers better than the 2020 status quo. Given that, it makes no sense to assume the Times will be as wrong as they were then.

Debate Night Tuesday In America

The other key variable, and the reason all of this panic and anxiety is frankly insane, is that there is a debate Tuesday. Obviously, I was dead wrong about the last one being helpful to the Democratic nominee, but it’s really not like Donald Trump did well in the June debate. He was still his unhinged, election-denying self. He just wasn’t pausing for 12 seconds halfway through a sentence.

The truth is, Donald Trump still sucks as a debater. He’s 1-5 in general election Presidential debates lifetime, and his one win is the debate equivalent of winning because the other guy punched himself in the face.

Harris, on the other hand, is fine as a debater. She’s not great if she gets a hard follow up and she has plenty of policy backflips that can be exploited. Trump has been more rambling and less coherent since 2015. Trump cannot land a punch on her on the stump. He’s addicted to race-baiting and dumb nicknames and not focusing on the fact that she ran to Joe Biden’s left in 2019 and now is trying to tack to the center.

Against Nikki Haley, I’d say Harris is a debate underdog. Now, she’s likely going to skate by on her flip flops and be deemed the debate winner, as Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden have been five times.

Prospects

Nothing has moved me off the position that Kamala Harris is a slight favorite to win the Presidency. Her polling in Georgia and Nevada have improved considerably, which gives her a viable non-Pennsylvania path to the Presidency. She’s still winning Michigan and Wisconsin in most polls. And even in Pennsylvania, the bad, right-wing pollsters still have one or two-point races.

I understand how the narrative has spun out on Harris, but it’s still stupid that it has. Harris is still more likely than not to win the Presidential election. One bad poll and Nate Silver’s model aren’t enough to sway me.

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