Political Poll Wars and the 13 Keys to the White House
I haven’t been this excited about the US presidential election since 2008. Normally we expect an “October Surprise” in the month before the official election but we’ve already had massive surprises in July and August, from the attempted assassination of former president Donald Trump to Joe Biden, the incumbent Democratic president, withdrawing from the 2024 election with Vice President Kamala Harris as his replacement. And now, Robert Kennedy Jr. suspended his campaign to endorse Trump 24 hours after the last day of the DNC Convention.
In the last 8 months, I’ve been closely following the election polls to see who has the possibility of winning the 2024 US presidential election while following Allan Lichtman’s 13 Keys, a formula that Lichtman has used to successfully predict every single US presidential election since 1984.
Let’s find out which polls are the most reliable and what these 13 keys are all about.
My go-to for presidential election polls
There are quite a few election polls out there, but you have to go back to the 2016 presidential election to see who was the closest to predicting the winning candidate because that election year, just about ever pollster heavily favored Hillary Clinton to win, with some having her up as much as 10 points beating Donald Trump. It’s not that the polls were completely inaccurate, but so many polls underestimated the support of Donald Trump, requiring many of the pollsters re-assess their poll weighting.
For one, pollsters have adjusted their approach to “weighting,” a method that assigns a multiplier to each respondent to change how much their answer sways the overall poll outcome — Rebecca Picciotto, Politics Reporter (CNBC)
Donald Trump became president that year, but was beat by Joe Biden in 2020, and is now running against Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election.
In 2016, pollsters McClatchy/Marist, USC/Los Angeles Times Poll, and UPI/CVoter Poll, appeared to be the most accurate. Some of these pollsters are no longer around and have combined with other organizations. The McClatchy/Marist poll is now the NPR/PBS News/Marist National poll.
But there are tons of other pollsters that I prefer outside of this list which I check frequently and they constantly update their latest poll surveys for the presidential election.
My favorite pollsters:
- NY Times/Siena: One of the largest pollsters out there and post their polls almost weekly. Their cross-tabs (survey categories) are pretty in-depth. You can get into the “nooks and cranny” of how likely registered voters will vote across race, gender, neighborhood, education, and many other cohorts.
- Rasmussen Report: I consider this the “dark horse” of political pollsters. Some have accused Rasmussen of weighting heavily in-favor of Republican/right-wing candidates, but I’m not sure if that’s 100% true for the presidential election. Their 2016 and 2020 US presidential election results were fairly accurate and one of the few pollsters that had Trump edging out Clinton in 2016. Do not count Rasmussen out.
- Black Voter Project: A pollster that specifically targets African American opinion and voting. Although I would love to see BVP post more frequently, they are a reliable source on the views of the Black voting bloc, especially presidential elections. Considering Trump has peeled away a segment of the Black voting bloc since his 2016 presidential run, this is a worthy space to watch.
- 538: Unlike the other pollsters, 538 is a bit different. They are a poll aggregation site. Meaning they take all the current political polls and average out all those polls. In March they dropped Rasmussen Reports from it’s analysis due to some accusations of dubious polling for right-wing organizations. Although, I haven’t investigated all the alleged accusations against Rasmussen from 538, I still appreciate Rasmussen Reports presidential polling. If you don’t like 538, you can go to RealClearPolling, another polling aggregator.
Allan Lichtman’s 13 Keys to the White House
What if I told you there was two individuals that came up with a method that predicted all 38 US presidential elections since the US election of 1860, with only two elections incorrectly predicted, the election of 1876 and 2000.
That’s a 95% success rate! In collaboration with Russian geophysicist Vladimir Keilis-Borok, who initially applied prediction techniques to earthquake forecasting, Licthman created the keys in 1981 and first applied this system successfully to predict the outcome of the 1984 presidential election. Although Licthman and Keilis-Borok created the keys in 1981 he has applied the keys retroactively as far a back as the presidential election of 1860.
However, some have accused Licthman of see-sawing between the popular vote and the electoral vote to increase the accuracy rate of his predictions. And some have even argued that Licthman’s keys won’t work in the 2024 election.
Although he correctly predicted the popular vote in the 2000 and 1876 presidential elections, due to the unique nature of those elections, it was the electoral vote that really mattered.
In short, Licthman’s keys are a pretty good measure, albeit imperfect. There is no method that exists that can rival what these 13 keys are able to predict over a period that spans more than 150 years. They even have a 13 Keys Tracker that allows you to interpret how you think each key will be flipped in the current presidential election.
One of these pollsters could be really wrong
At this point, Rasmussen Reports seems to be one of the few high visibility pollsters that has Trump up nationally, while many other polls have Kamala Harris beating Trump in the national polls. In a recent interview with James Blair, president of Donald Trump’s 2024 Campaign, Blair was asked by Sean Spicer, Former White House Press Secretary for Donald Trump and host of the Sean Spicer show, if the election were held today, can Trump get to the 270 electoral votes to win the election?
Blair said, “Right now, we are north of 270. Here’s what I would say, and we’ll go by the public polling—averages. Averages are the typical thing to look at. The RCP (RealClearPolling) average, historically has been a pretty good indicator, other than it typically under represents president’s Trump support”
Blair goes a step further to refute the polling numbers of the latest NY Times/Siena polls posted from August 8th to the 15th.
Although election polling and Licthman’s 13 keys is a bit of art and science, it will be very interesting to see who accurately predicted which candidate will win, come the November presidential election.
Happy polling!
