What do we make of the polls?

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10. the campaigns have incentives to spin the race as close, in order to motivate people to vote.

i'm not saying they are wrong, it's pretty easy for state races to be within the margin of error because they usually don't sample enough within a single state to get a small margin of error. 3% is large and 4% is huge in any reasonably close race. basically, the winner has to be 95% likely to win in order to be outside the margin of error. they can still be 90% likely to win and it's inside the margin of error.

moreover, there are different factors when translating polls to votes. it's going to be a turnout election, so regardless of who is a bit ahead or behind when you ask them in a poll, i think democrats will clobber republicans by simply turning out in much larger numbers.

the pollsters don't have a great way of predicting this, i think they largely rely on previous turnout percentages for each demographic. but if a larger percentage of women (e.g., "thanks" to dobbs) vote compared to historical norms, that alone could have a great impact on the race.


i'm pretty much at the point where i think polls are largely useless in terms of estimating where the race is at. they don't take voter suppression or turnout motivation into account, and these days the "approval" ratings are very stubborn, but likeliness to vote is much more volatile. that's where the game is, that's what the campaigns are mostly about, and the polls largely miss it.