Episode Summary
Presidential elections are usually about contrasting policy and philosophical approaches. And that certainly is the case in this year’s contest. But the battle between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump is highlighting another key difference, how the two candidates are approaching voter outreach.
While both Harris and Trump are working to get their loyal voters to the polls, when it comes to reaching beyond their party’s base voters, each candidate is taking a different approach. Harris has made extensive outreach attempts to disaffected Republicans, including supporters of former candidate Nikki Haley. In addition to promising to appoint a Republican to her presidential cabinet, she also featured several Republican elected officials at the Democratic National Convention over the summer, and appeared at an event with former senior House Republican Liz Cheney.
Trump is doing that as well by highlighting the support he has received recently from former Democratic presidential candidates Tulsi Gabbard and Robert Kennedy Jr., but Trump is adding another layer as well by heavily investing in a marketing and media strategy to reach out to low-propensity voters who are sympathetic to his candidacy.
Relying on unreliable voters is a risky strategy, needless to say. But on the other hand, almost 80 million eligible Americans chose not to participate in the 2020 election. That’s a much bigger potential pool of votes than the minority of Republicans who preferred Nikki Haley in the primaries.
The ex-president is trying to find these potential votes by working closely with political action committees run by the far-right activist Charlie Kirk and another one run by the reactionary billionaire Elon Musk. And Trump is focusing on more unorthodox outreach methods as well through appearances on lifestyle and sports podcasts and even showing up at college football games and UFC matches in an effort to leverage his celebrity status and hard hitting rhetoric to attract citizens who might otherwise sit out the election cycle.
In short, Harris is trying to persuade while Trump is trying to motivate.
We won’t know which candidate got it right until a few weeks from now. But in this episode, I wanted to discuss the lay of the land with David Paleologos. He’s the director of the Suffolk University Political Research Center in Boston, Massachusetts, one of the highest-quality political polling operations in the country.
The transcript of this audio-only discussion is below. Because of its length, some podcast apps and email programs may truncate it. Access the episode page to get the full text.
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Audio Chapters
00:00 — Introduction
05:14 — Demographic differences in Arizona from 2020
12:00 — Trump is reviving Obama’s 2008 strategy of motivating unlikely voters
20:17 — A huge gender gap among young Hispanics over what issues matter
26:11 — Israel-Gaza war is having very little impact in presidential race
28:57 — Are polling aggregation websites being gamed by low-quality polls?
32:33 — Is predicting election probabilities useful?
42:11 — Who shows up to vote within demographic groups shouldn’t be overlooked
45:56 — Why the limits of polling are so important to remember
Audio Transcript
The following is a machine-generated transcript of the audio that has not been proofed. It is provided for convenience purposes only.
MATTHEW SHEFFIELD: So we're getting down to the wire in the election and, it's continuing to be very close as our recent presidential elections have been in the U. S. And I noticed a trend that I wanted to run by you, which is that it seems like the linchpin of the election is going to come down to what do people think of Kamala Harris, not what do they think of Donald Trump. Is that right?
DAVID PALEOLOGOS: Yes, and, and part of the reason is that in some demographics, Kamala Harris is still in the introduction phase. There are a lot of people still, many of them are the reason why people are undecided who say that they don't know enough about her, even though she's been vice president, they don't know what policies she would employ or where she stands on issues.
So she has some room to fill. [00:04:00] And in terms of the persuasion argument, people, you can't persuade someone until they're fully understanding of where you are and what your positions are.
Trump on the other hand, you get what you get. People know what he is. People know what he stands for. Whether you agree with him or not.
And so the defining piece still has yet to be done 100 percent full on Kamala Harris. So we don't quite, we're not quite there yet, but we're getting close.
SHEFFIELD: Yeah. And what's interesting also is that that's true of a lot of Democrats that in your polls and everybody else's. When you look at the numbers, there's, there's a lot of Democrats who say, well, I don't, I don't know what to think. I'm uncertain or I have no opinion. And it's much higher than it is for Trump.
Right?
PALEOLOGOS: Oh, sure. You absolutely have a lot more undecided, no [00:05:00] opinion on many of the Democratic candidates. So yeah, absolutely. And this is kind of the challenge for us, right? This is the challenge for us to, to measure this, not only nationally, but state by state by state.
Demographic differences in Arizona from 2020
SHEFFIELD: It is. Yeah. And it's interesting seeing that the Harris campaign, the NBC just came out with this story reported by a bunch of people saying that a lot of Democrats are concerned that she's playing it too safe that, that there's a concern that, people, yeah, they don't, that some people don't know who she is. And, and to me, I feel like when, when a lot of times people will say, well, I need to know more about their policies. What they really mean is I need to know more them as a person, but it's hard to poll for that, isn't it?
PALEOLOGOS: It sure is. We, we, we use different metrics. We use job approval. We use personal favorability and unfavorability, but you really don't get to those issues unless you're asking an open [00:06:00] ended question. I mean, the poll that you cite the Arizona poll was considered an outlier initially. The only other, we had Trump winning by six in Arizona.
The only other poll that was even close to that recently was the New York times Siena poll. Most of the other polls have Trump winning by just a point or two. But I think that the six-point margin is. Closer to what the reality is because Trump was winning by six. We did two polls in Arizona, one, the statewide poll and one in Maricopa County, which is the biggest in Arizona.
And also, it's the bellwether county and usually Maricopa runs a couple of points more Democratic than the statewide. And what we found was almost to the T statewide had Trump winning by six Maricopa, Trump was also winning by four. And so I [00:07:00] think that what a lot of polls may not be picking up is maybe the change in registration.
I mean, back in 2020 there were more Republicans and Democrats by about 130, 000. And, that's changed now. It's twice that it's 260, 000 Republican advantage and registration. So it's, it's not like you can take 2020 Arizona and just copy it and paste it into 2024, you've got another 130, 000 registered net registered Republicans in Arizona.
SHEFFIELD: And a lot of that's people, Oh, I'm sorry. They had a lot of that's people just had moved in from California that were Republicans, like that became a thing after Trump lost in 2020.
PALEOLOGOS: Yeah, absolutely. And so that's one big difference between 2020 and today in Arizona. Another is if you look at the exit polls in Arizona, 2020, the top two issues were the [00:08:00] economy and Trump was winning by a big, big margin. And the second issue was coronavirus where Biden was winning by a big number.
So you almost had an even offset. Between the top two issues in Arizona today, the top two issues in Arizona are both Trump strengths. You've got the economy where he's. Doing better than Harris and you have immigration where he's doing better than Harris. So the dynamics are a little bit tricky, a little bit different today in Arizona, but again, polls are a snapshot in time.
Things can change and certainly there's enough time for things to change.
SHEFFIELD: And one thing you guys are always having to deal with as a challenge as pollsters is determining who is a likely voter and especially in the age of Trump, that's become a lot harder to tell. Hasn't it?
PALEOLOGOS: Yes, it has been harder to tell. I mean, we have tests to [00:09:00] try and calibrate that, for example, we do ask a recall question, a lot of times people say, well, the polls don't reflect the Trump voters, but in the last couple of cycles, we've been asking the recall question. So that we'll have an understanding of whether or not the poll sample adequately reflects what previously happened in 2020. And that's been a recent thing for us and for other pollsters. But, if you had a poll that had, a recall question showing Trump up 10 or Harris up 10, you would know that there was something amiss.
But if you look at the recall questions that most of the pollsters are using, it's usually around the, it's usually around the same proportions. Obviously, there are new voters, people who are voting for the first time and so on. People who say they did not vote in 2020, but they're planning to vote in [00:10:00] 2024.
So you've got that dynamic, but it's not an easy thing to adjust for. And secondly, who, whoever is a likely voter today, four weeks before the election may, may not be in, in four weeks or people who we screened out, who said to us, I'm not likely to vote. I hate politicians who may be activated in the next four weeks, and they may be voting for Harris or for Trump.
It may only be a few percentage points, but people screen in and screen out of the polls based on whether they're likely at the time we vote. Call them and sometimes that pool changes and it's fluid.
SHEFFIELD: Yeah, absolutely. And then also in a lot of states, they have things like same day registration and stuff like that as well.
PALEOLOGOS: Yeah, same day registration so that you know You go to the polls, you present the information that you need to present, and then you [00:11:00] register and then you take a ballot you cast the vote so obviously that becomes tricky because If you're working from a voter list, you're going to miss those people because they're not voters on a list They are residents who are planning to vote.
And that's why in our polls we first ask whether they're likely to vote or how likely they are to vote. And then we ask party registration and if they say they're not registered yet, we don't screen them out. We allow them to go through because we They've identified themselves as being likely or very likely to vote, and they still are not registered yet.
So, now they may not register and they may not vote, but we have to, let people screen, screen in and self identify. And so we don't want to rule out people who aren't registered to vote, but who plan to vote.
SHEFFIELD: Yeah. And there is one. There's another kind of wrinkle, which is that, and I guess we were originally going to talk about this at the end, but I'm going to move it up here [00:12:00] now.
Trump is reviving Obama's 2008 strategy of motivating unlikely voters
SHEFFIELD: Um, and that is that there's, there's some discussion lately that, that Donald Trump, because of his celebrity, because of his kind of more simplistic and more hard edge kind of rhetoric that he can motivate people who are just generally not interested in voting for the politicians of any party much less the Republican party. And and that's, it's something that a lot of people have been talking about.
Turning point action, which is, this kind of Christian reactionary group run by Charlie Kirk. They have been kind of, they've kind of taken over a lot of the on the ground organizing from the trump campaign.
And, and according to, to a guy who who is a spokesperson from them, he, he said that just in Arizona alone, there's 300, 000 Low propensity, conservative leaning votes in Arizona. And that's, that's basically what they've kind of, or reorganize their campaign [00:13:00] outreach strategy around is to realizing that they won't be able to re persuade people that.
Defected from him in 2020 where, since then but rather they're just going to try to find new voters or not rather non voters and kind of energize them. It's, it's a different strategy for Republicans and there's been some discussion about whether, the, for a long time, the Democrats were the, were more likely, or sorry, for a long time, the Democrats in polls.
They were performing better in registered voter samples versus likely voter samples. And now there's some discussion about whether with Trump in the mix, things might be reversed. Have you seen any of that?
PALEOLOGOS: Yeah, I have, there are people who Especially who are less educated, that is people in the trades, vocational trained [00:14:00] voters or potential voters or people maybe who don't have a college education, or they have some degree or an associate's degree, or maybe they're just a high school, a high school grad.
They, they also have normally a lower probability of being politically engaged and a lower probability of voting because they don't, they don't see the value in it. And those are people who are sitting out there who would vote for Trump. If they were recruited and so that's that's an area of potential growth in the Trump base, not necessarily, as you say, in persuasion, you don't need to persuade it's, it's identifying an additional block of people who would match.
What a Trump voter is the test is, can you find them and then can you motivate them to vote? And that's always been sort of the. The [00:15:00] piece that's the missing piece, Barack Obama did this by the way, when we did our first unregistered unlikely voter poll back in the summer of 2012, Barack Obama used this very, very research which was, he didn't have to persuade people if he just needed to find the people who would vote for Barack Obama in 2012, because as you remember in September, the race Between him and Romney was pretty close at that time, and they calculated that there was going to be a bit of a drop off that there was a little bit of a sophomore slump that people weren't as excited in 2012 as in 2008, and they had to find additional voters who they knew would vote for Barack Obama, and they did it in 2012.
Now you have Trump 12 years later, doing the same thing on the Republican side.
SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, and it's also. Like this group of voters that were to our keep [00:16:00] saying voters. We don't know that they will be that this this group of people, they're also harder to to pull. And and that, you guys have been kind of alone in really. Plumbing the depths of of this huge market. I mean, this is more than 70 million people that we're talking about here.
And generally they don't answer the phone for pollsters. They don't want to participate generally in politics. They don't like it. And, in some ways, it's. It could be, ending up being the ace in the hole for Trump, or it could be a wild mistake.
Right?
PALEOLOGOS: It's a calculated risk, but you're absolutely right in 2020, Joe Biden got more votes than any other presidential candidate in the history of our country, but keep in mind that more people didn't vote for In the presidential election, then voted for Joe Biden. So we're not talking about a swath of 5 million people or 10 million people.
We're talking about over 80 million [00:17:00] people who could have voted in 2020. They were citizens. They were either not registered or they were even registered, but they just skipped voting. In the presidential election, that's a big group of people for both campaigns to try and parse out and figure out how they can get into that non voter pool, identify their core support and then bring them out on election day or get them to vote by mail.
SHEFFIELD: Yeah. And it's and it's interesting when you look at the outreach strategies that the Trump camp has done with them that they are, are are focusing very heavily on. Unearned media and, getting him onto lifestyle podcasts and sports podcasts, or even showing up and like he showed up at the Alabama, Michigan football game a few weeks ago.
And they're really going hard for these unlikely voters. And I don't, it's, I haven't seen the Harris campaign doing that as much. He's, [00:18:00] it's like, there is this idea. They seem to think that. They want to have, they value control of the, of the message more than they value the penetration of the message.
Seems like,
PALEOLOGOS: Yeah, I mean, control the message is important. There's no question about that. But micro targeting is equally important. And as you say, mining for your voter is important. In in a granular way is also extremely important. And you really have to do both things. And maybe Kamala Harris is doing it beneath the surface, but I think, you'd pick it up in the polling.
I mean, 1 good 1 good aspect of the polling in 2024 is that we all do it differently. So that, if we were all calling landlines like 50 years ago and there was some structural issue, [00:19:00] we'd all be off by the same amount, but we're all doing this differently. So we're doing live callers, mostly cell phones, some landline, others are doing the IVR, the robo polling.
Some people are doing online panels. Some people are doing, a hybrid. So we're all going about finding likely voters in these states and nationally differently and yet you're seeing the same trend lines in the states that we're polling. So there's got to be something to that, some of us are going to pick up.
Trump voters, some of us not, we're going to undercount Trump voters. But I think all in all, when you look at the averages, you're getting a pretty clear picture of what's going on right now. So if Trump is doing something beneath the surface or Kamala Harris is, some of us are picking that up. It's not going to be totally missed by everybody.
[00:20:00] Silence.
SHEFFIELD: doing the battleground stuff, but also looking at what Hispanic voters are or Hispanic citizens are thinking in the different states.
A huge gender gap among young Hispanics over what issues matter
SHEFFIELD: And you got a new poll out about Arizona and Nevada walk us, walk us through some of your key findings there.
If you could please.
PALEOLOGOS: So we polled 500 likely Hispanic voters in Nevada and 500 in Arizona. Now that's important because when you do a statewide poll, the swath of Hispanic voters in a statewide Arizona or Nevada poll is very small. It may only be 150, 200 respondents. And so it's really hard to broad brush, brush issues with.
Just that small subset. So we, we reached 500 likely Hispanic voters. So [00:21:00] it's a good piece of research. And what we found is that Kamala Harris is winning both states and winning Hispanic voters in both states. We have her winning by a little bit higher than some of the other polls. Most of the other polls show her winning among Hispanic voters by like.
12 to 14 points. We have her winning more in the high teens which is terrific for her, but it's not quite at the level of what Joe Biden won by in Arizona and Nevada. Biden won by 26 points in Nevada. Exit poll said, and 24 points in Arizona. And so what I did in the research, which we just released, it's just out, is I looked at what groups, what, what particular demographics within these Hispanic voters are holding back on Kamala Harris.
And we found the answer. The answer is young, Hispanic, Latino. [00:22:00] Likely voters ages, 18 to 34 and by the way, ages, 35 to 49 weren't much better for Harris either. But the, the, the real focus in terms of, what we released, what I tweeted about is young Hispanic voters who Are more Trump than they are Harris when we did the black voter polls a month ago in Michigan and Pennsylvania, it Harris was winning all age groups and all genders of black voters and young black voters were slightly slightly higher for Trump, but she was still winning.
Younger black voters in both states. It's different with the Hispanic voters in Arizona and Nevada. Trump's actually winning among young Hispanic voters in both Nevada and [00:23:00] Arizona. I mean, Trump was getting maybe 18, 19, 20 percent of black voters in Detroit and in, I'm sorry, in Michigan and in Pennsylvania, but you know, still losing. But it was, but that was higher than it should have been in those two states. But in Arizona and Nevada, Trump's actually winning younger voters, ages 18 to 34. So that that's a challenge now in the recall question, Trump did well, he was competitive. He was like. Even with Biden, young men which also was a problem because we're seeing young Hispanic men acting away from the democratic party.
And what this poll is telling us is that, that instead of it, instead of Harris running, even among young men, she's now trailing among young Hispanic men in both States. And [00:24:00] so for that reason. Harris Trails Biden in terms of what she's winning by over Trump. She's only winning by high teens in Arizona and Nevada, and she should, she,
SHEFFIELD: Hispanics. Yeah.
PALEOLOGOS: and she needs to be winning by between 24 and 26, which is what Biden won by.
And that one demographic, young Hispanic men is the demographic that's holding back those numbers from, being those, those Biden wide margins that you saw among Hispanics in 2020.
SHEFFIELD: Yeah. And it seems like, from the research that I've seen elsewhere that for these younger male voters, that it's the economy and inflation that they are concerned about. And it's a little bit hard for Harris to say, well, the inflation rate has gone way down and it's pretty normal [00:25:00] now. That's a hard message to explain to people who don't know a lot about politics or don't follow it a lot, right?
PALEOLOGOS: Yeah, I think so. We looked at the issue. What is the issue that is the driving point for young Hispanic men and abortion rights, for example, is only like 2 percent or 3 percent and the economy is like 50%. So there's potentially a messaging problem here because. Abortion rights is a very important issue in both states and definitely resonates with younger women, Hispanic women but that message doesn't resonate with young Hispanic men. It's all about inflation and the economy. And then in the secondary issue is immigration policy. So those are issues that, [00:26:00] Harris hasn't adequately addressed with young Hispanic men. And the result is that Trump is becoming more and more of a palatable option.
Israel-Gaza war is having very little impact in presidential race
SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, and it's, it's interesting also, um, one thing that I do hear from more, let's say further left critics of Kamala Harris is that they believe that the situation and the war in Gaza between, with Israel there, that that's somehow making young people not support her, but the numbers, they, they never have showed that like, this is just not an issue that Americans care a lot about, right?
PALEOLOGOS: Right. That's not that's not a deal breaking issue. And it's not among Hispanic voters, likely Hispanic voters either. I mean, there
SHEFFIELD: And Not even in Michigan either, right?
PALEOLOGOS: No, I mean, in the Muslim community and the black Muslim community. Yes, it is. But, but it's not really, it's, [00:27:00] I think it's an overplayed issue except in those precincts.
You had a Muslim mayor who endorsed Trump, who was a Democrat and it's over the, Gaza issue, but I don't, I don't see that issue playing out in any significant way. In Arizona or Nevada and even in Pennsylvania, I mean. I mean, Hispanics in North Hampton County, which is, one of the bellwethers in Pennsylvania, they were overwhelmingly supporting Harris and the black voting voters were really strong for Harris in Pennsylvania, again, except for young black men,
SHEFFIELD: Yeah, this, I mean, it seems like an issue where, because, and I don't know if you guys have done polls specifically asking about what, what do you think of the situation there? But from what I've seen. A lot of people, they might not like what Israel's [00:28:00] doing but it's just not on their priority list high up there at all.
They think it's a terrible situation and but it's, it's not first of mind.
PALEOLOGOS: Not right at the moment, it isn't. And again, these polls are snapshot in time and are contingent on things staying the same in terms of their predictability in November. But if things change in the Middle East and they could, then it could escalate as more of a deal breaking issue for some voters, but you're right as of now, polls being a snapshot in time not, not one of those issues that is significant enough to swing a particular swing state.
or have the kind of influence I think that's discussed, probably too much on cable news.
Are polling aggregation websites being gamed by low-quality polls?
SHEFFIELD: Yeah, well, and of course, speaking of the [00:29:00] whole snapshot idea, I mean, one change that obviously has impacted polling a lot in, let's say, the past, I don't know, I guess, 20 years, roughly, or maybe 16 is, is the, is the birth of these polling aggregation websites. So like 538, real clear politics, other ones. I mean, do you think that those websites are kind of, are they encouraging herding or are they encouraging, like discouraging methodological innovation or maybe they were at one point or are in and are not anymore? What's your take?
PALEOLOGOS: It's it's the kind of commercialization of polling. A lot of people who bet on outcomes on different gambling websites, whether it's who's going to win for president or who's going to win in a particular state. It's become sort of a big thing. Big money game and it's not a game, but, it's become a game with a lot of people.
And I [00:30:00] think that the polling aggregators are vulnerable to the flooding of and release of polls that might be partisan and it only, it takes a lot of discretion for people to adjust for that. I think in 2022, you had a lot of conservative. Or conservatively tied polling outfits that were releasing poll after poll in a short period of time, giving the illusion that there would be a red wave and, we don't release 7 polls a week.
Others do, because their methods are different. They may do online panels or they may do robo polling and it's all about volume for them. But what happens is all of those polls get listed on the polling websites that are aggregating all of our work. Real clear politics, five 38 silver bulletin, Charlie cook, crystal ball.
Everybody [00:31:00] has their own model. And if Suffolk releases a poll in a bellwether in a week, that poll is as good as it may be or not. It gets drowned out by seven or eight polls released by a conservative or a liberal tied organization, and that impacts the averages, and it impacts the commentary in the narrative because people will write about swings and momentum that appear to be happening based on where the polling averages are going, and it could be true, or it may not be true, like it was Not true in 2022 and there is a risk to that because there are people who can be swayed by where voters are trending and what momentum is taking place at the moment and it's a, it does influence the art of polling and it ultimately [00:32:00] influences democracy.
So, we hope that the best pollsters will be given an appropriately high weight in these models that are done by polling aggregators and that the polls that are more partisan related will be discounted entirely or be given less weight. At least in that way, we have a fair shot to give the polling aggregators their best look at what's really happening.
Is predicting election probabilities useful?
SHEFFIELD: Mm-Hmm. . Yeah. Now what do you think though about the idea of assigning probabilities to races at particular points in time. Do you think that's a sound method or, or not? Doesn't make sense.
PALEOLOGOS: Well, I mean, I can assign probabilities for anything that happens. It's done in medicine, it's done in aviation, it's done in In politics, [00:33:00] and that's fine, provided that the inputs into the probability model are justifiable and and can be defended by the architect or the inventor of that particular model.
It can be embarrassing. I mean, we don't do it. We just poll others to use our polls for their own probability analysis. But it can be embarrassing if you go into an election with a 90 percent probability of someone winning and then they lose. And that. Did happen in 2016. And maybe with a I, there'll be ways to factor out the information that's more noise than it is a signal.
SHEFFIELD: Yeah, well, it's, I mean, I, I am kind of doubtful of that though, because I mean, the problem, there's, I think there's a fundamental [00:34:00] problem with trying to do probabilistic estimations for human behavior versus natural functions, natural processes like winds can be better predicted.
I feel like than human behavior. You just at the end of the day, you don't know what side of the bed somebody is going to wake up on an undecided voter and you really, or you don't know what video YouTube that given day. And whereas with you, you can see, well, I, I see there's a wind current that's down in, the Gulf of Mexico, and so therefore it's, likely going to, going to travel over to Alabama, by such and such date, like these are, are more defined and discrete processes in a lot of ways.
PALEOLOGOS: Yeah, yes. And no, I mean, we've seen hurricanes veer off track and they, those are all probability based to based on a number of different a number of different inputs and indices and the models [00:35:00] do change over time and I mean, I'm not a defender of the aggregators and their models, but I will say that if their model adjusts to the change in the polling in in the in the correct proportion, then their model should be correct at the end of this.
And if it's not, if we have another 2016, where you have models all pointing in 1 direction, and then the outcome flips we're going to have a serious polling discussion. I mean, the polling world had a very good year in 2022. We had a very good year in 2022, so did a lot of other pollsters, and those that predicted the red wave were wrong and the aggregators that relied too much on those polls were also kind of off in terms of what they predicted.
So there's two ways to look at it. Either the pollsters are getting better and [00:36:00] 2024 will be somewhat similar to 2022, or we'll revert back to the fact that presidential elections are unpredictable and are less we'll have less calibration. Then the midterm elections, because of what you just said, people, an undecided voter, wakes up, gets the information where they get the information, and then they go ahead and pick whoever they pick.
Another factor and all of this in terms of the swing states is the ballots. The ballots are different, and they, those differences in the ballots may matter. For example, in Pennsylvania, there were four candidates on the ballot. Pretty simple. But in Michigan, there's eight candidates on the ballot. And we know from the black voter polls in Michigan, that there was a considerable amount of black voters who weren't voting [00:37:00] for Harris or for Trump, but were voting for Cornel West.
Please Cornel West was bumped off the Michigan ballot, but then won an appeal, and he's now back on that ballot. So, if there are black voters who just don't feel warm enough for Kamala Harris, but won't vote for Trump. They could vote for Cornel West or Jill Stein, and so I'm not saying that that's going to be the factor in Michigan, but let's say the Michigan, right now we had Michigan, we had Harris by three in Michigan, but let's say Michigan drops down to a one point race, then those voters, then those other six candidates on that Michigan ballot, they're going to vote They're going to have an impact if the race is that close.
And that's why it's going to be really difficult to pick states like that, where you have so many different ballot options. If they are very [00:38:00] close going into election day.
SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, and then also, I mean, historically speaking, the support for third parties also does tend to contract the closer you get to the actual election day, but it's hard to predict that contraction because, I mean, many cases, this would be the difference between 1% and 2% or half a percent and, 0.8%, something like that.
These are things that do make it harder to uh, you know, estimate.
PALEOLOGOS: I mean, I could see based on what we went live through with the 2024 primary, I could see Republicans who will never vote for Harris, but who disliked Trump potentially voting for chase Oliver, the libertarian, it's a, that's a safe. That's a safe place to be. They don't like Trump and they'll never vote for the Democrat Harris, but that, [00:39:00] and they're Republicans.
So, Trump needs those voters, he needs them to, and the, like you say, in the 11th hour to wake up and say, I'm not going to vote libertarian. I'm going to go with Trump, even though I don't like him. He's Republican, whatever. That's and on the flip side, I could see Democrats, especially young black men, young Hispanic men who don't like Trump.
But they don't like Harris, but they don't want to vote for Trump instead. And if they have the ability to vote green party, Jill Stein or a corner West, or even throw a protest vote for RFK in Michigan, because he is on the ballot, Michigan, that's going to, that's what those are votes away from Harris.
And that's going to impact the. The ultimate, the ultimate the, the ultimate outcome in a profound way.
SHEFFIELD: Yeah, yeah, it's, and it does, [00:40:00] it's hard to tell.
Gender gap in voting patterns
SHEFFIELD: Um, now I guess one of the other trends that, that some pollsters have been finding is a an allegedly wider, Gender gap among Generation Z than in older generations, so such that like, let's say, millennial men and women are closer together in terms of their vote patterns.
They're both majority. Democratic whereas among Gen Z men in some surveys, and this is kind of disputed. Some people don't agree with this, that they think that that's just kind of a statistical error. And because there's just not enough of a sample size with these younger, these younger voters, I mean, is that research that you've looked at and have an opinion on yet?
PALEOLOGOS: I mean, we know that there is a pronounced gender gap overall, and, and it's really guys versus girls. It's [00:41:00] economy, immigration versus Supreme Court justices, abortion rights. And then in between, there are the other issues, climate change, healthcare, education, transportation, the budget. National security, the war.
And so there is a gender gap. I'm, the, the, the young white men and women I don't think has the, the differential that we're seeing with. Younger persons of color, men and women. So to that end, I think I would agree that there's more, there's more parity. But again, it's all about the state and.
The the race, the race and the ethnic background within those categories. And like you say, when you get into a subset of a subset, you're talking about a really small sample pool [00:42:00] with a much higher margin of error.
SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's definitely something I think people are going to be keeping an eye out for.
Who shows up to vote in demographic groups matters just as much as the margins
SHEFFIELD: One of the other kind of questions that I feel like doesn't get talked about much is that, there's all this discussion about, well, so just such candidate, this was the, the margin of them in different demographic groups and whatnot, right? And those percentages may or may not change between race to race. But often what does change that doesn't get talked about a is who's actually shown up. The different demographic group. So, you, if you had, let's say in one group, it was a the same 53 to, I don't know, 40 difference, let's say the same 53 to 40 difference.
But there were twice as many of that group that showed up in another election, then it would be a huge thing. And yet. Probably not discussed as often. Do you think that [00:43:00] I, I really don't think that who turns out to vote is discussed as much.
PALEOLOGOS: No, it's not. And you're talking about width versus depth. We assume that the width is with equal intensity and equal participation. And what you're talking about is if you improve the depth of particular demographics, then you can really drive an outcome. And that's absolutely true.
That's absolutely true. We, we would hope that we can pick up some of that intensity and some of that depth by recording how intense. And how, how much willing they are to, to vote. And but it's not a perfect science and those are ways that you can really, those are the things that keep us up at night.
Because, an organization that can do that is an organization that can, put all of us in polling in peril. I mean, it [00:44:00] kind of happened to the poll world in 2008. We were lucky to have picked it up. But, when Barack Obama beat Hillary Clinton in New Hampshire in 2008, in that Democratic primary what happened was the depth issue of women In New Hampshire who were not registered to vote who loved Hillary Clinton never showed up in a lot of the polling.
We picked it up. We were lucky in the two bellwethers that we did and we had a close in the statewide. But that's a perfect example where, the gender gap was reported as it was, but what the operatives, the Clinton operatives successfully did was they flew below the radar. They found women who loved Hillary Clinton, but wouldn't, did not vote in the past.
And they motivated them not only to go and register to vote on election day, but then to cast a ballot for Hillary Clinton. And so the uneven [00:45:00] intensity among non voters who were women who liked Hillary Clinton far superseded what the overall female likely voter model was, and because of that tweaking, he, she pulled a major upset.
I mean, it doesn't happen a lot. And it doesn't happen usually in a widespread way, but that's why we follow the states that we follow because there's going to be a surprise in one of the swing states that nobody sees it may be to Harris's advantage. It could be a landslide for Trump that nobody picked up.
But either way. That's what makes this exciting too, right? That's what makes politics, it becomes this game of, who can, who can predict the winner and, and what the probability is of the outcome being what it is.
Why the limits of polling are so important to remember
SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Yeah. Well, and, going back to the [00:46:00] sort of low propensity voter, I mean, that's the Trump campaign, as, as we were saying, they, um, have really kind of doubled down on that and trying to activate these sympathetic young skewing men, it's primarily younger men is there, I mean, for the future, The Republican party, cause I always heard from Ron DeSantis supporters in particular that they thought that he would do just so much better in the race than Donald Trump would, that was always their assertion.
But you know, it seems like that Trump is able to activate and motivate a pretty sizable contingent of people who were, who were just not interested in the Republican party. And that was a part of the, the red the red wave that didn't happen in, in 2022. And also why a lot of these abortion rights referenda passed so overwhelmingly because, a lot of the Republican pro [00:47:00] Trump voters just didn't bother to show up and vote for it because they didn't really care about it.
PALEOLOGOS: Yeah, I mean, the problem with DeSantis was he never really stepped out of Florida in terms of how he was viewed. He thought that he could take his accomplishments in Florida and just spread it out across the country. And he can't really do that. I mean, DeSantis was never a small fish, except when he first ran.
But, he, he didn't know how to play in a primary against the big fish, who was vastly different than anything else that DeSantis had faced before. And that's okay, but you, a good candidate adjusts to that. I think the Santas's people were pretty savvy polling wise, but for some reason the strategy piece was missing the [00:48:00] take, taking the crosstabs from the polling and putting it into a strategy that worked.
And he couldn't, I mean, I think his thought process was. At least initially from what I remember, I wouldn't Trump falls, I'll be the person. And that was the, their theory, and to keep every other Republican at bay, whether it was Chris Christie, Nikki Haley, whomever, and that was just a strategy that didn't work.
And think hindsight is 2020. It'll make DeSantis a much better candidate and there won't be a behemoth like Trump, I don't think in a 2028 or a 2032 Republican primary. Even if Vance is the VP, I still don't think that he'll have that type of an advantage over the Republican primary electorate.
[00:49:00] So there's still hope for DeSantis. It just was an unfortunate matchup for him in this type, in this cycle.
SHEFFIELD: Yeah, and in a lot of ways, I mean, it was basically the same strategy that Trump's opponents in 2016 ran. I mean, and it didn't work then. And it didn't work in 2024 either.
PALEOLOGOS: I think I wrote a column of this early on, basically saying that the other Republican candidates need to go into a smoke filled room and make a deal like the Democrats did when they got behind Biden and, I think the more I thought about it and wrote about it, I think I concluded that there was no way, like, there was no way that DeSantis and Haley were going to be a team because there would be a fight over who's at the top of the ticket and egos getting in the way and, it was never -- but that was the chance [00:50:00] that was the chance to, to, to to take Trump out on the Republican primary. But again, same as 2016, he just snowballed. He started out with that 30 something 35, 40 percent and he just continued to snowball through the primaries and caucuses.
SHEFFIELD: Yeah, well, and, the, the Harris replacement also, I think it did and maybe let's wrap on this question, which is that. Yeah. I mean, to me, it kind of illustrated that sort of time between or right before Joe Biden dropped out. So, cause he, he had lost a lot of support within the democratic electorate before his debate with Trump.
And, and I think people forget that. But there was, there, there were polls that, that people were asking, well, so if Joe Biden was replaced, who, who would you like to see replace? Or, if, if so and so replaced Joe Biden, would you vote for that person or would you vote for Trump? [00:51:00] And she consistently did worse in those hypothetical questions then she did end up doing subsequently.
And to me, that kind of-- and obviously a poll can't, it's hard to get people to predict their opinion in the hypothetical future, but I think that that's, it is a sort of a, an example of how strategists were thinking polls could tell them something that they really couldn't. But if you're a pollster though, so you tell me,
PALEOLOGOS: yeah. So I think at the moment that a poll is taken, you have to be, you have to understand what the information is that a voter receives.
So, obviously, voters think about where they came, where they were coming from with Kamala Harris. She flopped in the, in the Democratic primary in [00:52:00] 2020 and was not very visible. And there were so many other people who are more prominently act who are permanently displayed, quite frankly, by the Democratic party who were more exciting to voters. And so that's probably why Harris didn't do so well, but the rollout of the announcement, the endorsement, the, the, the, the title wave of endorsements that she received, a really well orchestrated convention and, and sprinkle in some memes and some social media activity, which really made her a, a, a sexy pic on, on social media, the brat summer and, and, and all of the, all of what you saw on, on Instagram and Tik TOK.
All of that combined, really became this wave, but it was [00:53:00] a pendulum swing. And now the voters are. They're, they're in a place where they feel better about her personally.
They still don't feel like they know enough to make an informed decision, a small percentage. And now we're at the point where the pendulum might be swinging back a little bit, but there'll be several more swings before the election. So, a lot of times it's just timing. It's like, where is that pendulum going to finally swing before November hits? And are there any events like a hurricane or like a stock market crash or like a, a war scenario that, could jolt the voting public and move those votes and, in large measure for 1 candidate or the other.
SHEFFIELD: Yep. And that's what keeps it interesting. Definitely have to stay tuned and see what happens.
All right. Well, so, it's good to have you back here [00:54:00] for people who want to keep up with your stuff. What are your recommendations for them?
PALEOLOGOS: I would say visit two things. Visit the Suffolk research center homepage, which is suffolk.edu/suprc. And follow me on Twitter. It's a long one, the long Greek name, but it's @DavidPaleologos. And I'll see you on Twitter and I'll be giving my followers heads up on all the remaining polls. And even after the election.
SHEFFIELD: All right. Sounds good. Well, I definitely encourage everybody to do that. Thanks for being here.
PALEOLOGOS: All right, take care.
SHEFFIELD: All right, so that is the program for today. I appreciate you joining us for the conversation and you can always get more.
If you go to theoryofchange.show, you can get the video, audio, and transcript of all the episodes. And if you like this program, I encourage you to go to flux.community. Theory of Change is part of the Flux [00:55:00] Media Network and we have several other podcasts and articles that you can check out. Thanks for listening, and I'll see you next time.
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