Election 2020
Despite This Month’s Unprecedented News, Presidential Polling Is Frozen
A massive majority of American voters have already made up their minds.
Predictably, pundits and political reporters are making the assumption that the hectic news this month necessitates sharp turns in the trajectory of this election. Yet, as we have seen from presidential polling averages since June, none of the major news has dramatically moved the needle in either direction.
Biden still leads by roughly 7 points nationwide.
The temptation to associate the leading political stories of this month with changes in public polling is not a ridiculous notion, but it is one that does not hold up given the data we have this year. Time and time again, we have seen largely-covered events by the media not change vote choice such as this summer’s Black Lives Matter protests, anti-mask demonstrations, both major party conventions, the ongoing pandemic, the economic shutdown and its effects, record unemployment, fear of election insecurity, the West Coast on fire, and so on.
These events have moved public opinion virtually no-where, and we can see that thanks to 538’s polling averages of the most reliable polls to date. Biden has rarely dropped below 50% since mid-June, while Trump has been hard-pressed to escape the 42–43% range. These numbers show us outstanding consistency throughout a year of unprecedented political news.
The current polling consistency stands in stark contrast to the more erratic polling averages for the 2016 election. In 2016, there were noticeable changes in public opinion, and Americans were more susceptible to changing their mind as time went on. Noticeably, the gap between Clinton and Trump was much smaller than what this current race shows. On Election Day, Clinton enjoyed a 3.9% lead. Today, Biden’s lead is almost double. The current race for the White House is different in many ways, and one of those reasons is that public polling has turned rock solid.
This month, the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg is said to be the newest wrench thrown into an already chaotic election year. I do not deny that this could have an impact, as polling following her death has only just started. Further, the result of the Supreme Court fight in the Senate, whether the GOP is able to fill the seat before Election Day or if Democrats can stall, could potentially change public opinion.
However, if the rest of the news this cycle has been any indication, such a fight will not do much in the polling arena, despite some writing that the Evangelical right may be activated by the prospect that they may finally overturn Roe v. Wade. It may, but it will likely motivate the portion of the population that already decided to vote for Trump, and only reinforces his base rather than gathering up undecided votes. If anything, the Supreme Court fight will solidify defeat for Republican Senators like Cory Gardner, Martha McSally, and Susan Collins while assisting Senators like Lindsey Graham.
My analysis is informed both by the frozen polling averages and the newest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll showing that 90% of American voters are already decided and unmovable in their choice for president. In this poll, 50% of voters claim there is “no chance” they would cast their ballot for Trump and 40% saying the same of Biden. This leaves only 10% of the electorate as persuadable.
Can 10% of the electorate be consequential in the election outcome? Absolutely. Yet, there isn’t much evidence that points to this latest news cycle, devoted to filling the vacant Supreme Court pick, as an event which will moved persuade voters to switch candidates.
I could be missing the mark in this important way: All of the other events that have occurred worthy of changing public attitudes toward the candidates happened further out from Election Day than today’s news. Due to the short attention span of the electorate, it’s difficult to take even the most dramatic news all the way to the finish line. Recall that the House of Representatives impeached President Trump early this year. I bet you haven’t thought about that in while and why would you with what this year has brought us?
This Supreme Court vacancy, and the fight that will follow in the Senate, may be fresh enough to make an impact, and time will tell. However, in a year so over-saturated with political news, it will be hard for even this the break through and this is evidenced through the utterly frozen polling averages. So, I would not rush to the conclusion that RBG’s death is great for either candidate.
I wrote about the upcoming October Surprise (if we even have one), and how it likely won’t be enough to break through either:
I do not mean to suggest that the winner is set in stone, but if the nationwide polling stands the test of time in conjunction with the state polling in the Midwest and Arizona, Biden is in the best position to win the presidency. Of course, it will come down to where exactly these persuadable voters are located in the country for it to matter. If there is a large segment of undecided voters in Florida, Arizona, and Pennsylvania, then it will matter. Undecided Californians not so much.
I do mean to suggest that the American public is not easily persuadable this time around, and I’m not sure what kind of news cycle will reach the voters either campaign doesn’t have yet. NBC News cites that 18% of voters view the upcoming debates as “extremely important” and 11% as “quite important” but even that is difficult to know how it will translate to the ballot box.
The outcome is still uncertain. Never before has the United States had as many mail-in vote requests, leaving under-funded county board of elections to take on a massive task this year. Moreover, voters must understand how to cast their mail-in ballots properly as to not have it rejected. It is possible that the small number of undecided voters will influence the outcome of the election if the numbers are tight in key states, but even if this is the case, a massive majority of Americans remain unaltered by most news. I believe that will remain the case throughout October.
Hang tight, we are 40 days from Election Day.
