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State of the race based on only the more reliable pollsters [1]

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Date: 2024-10-13  

As has been mentioned by others, there have been an inordinate number partisan or otherwise suspect polls of late. These bad polls have had an affect on the media narrative and also on the polling averages published on various websites. I am sure that the pundits and polling aggregators take into account the quality of the pollsters, so that higher weights are given to the more respected pollsters. However, with so many biased or unreliable polls coming out of late, I wanted to see what the polling averages would look like if the poor-quality pollsters were completely removed from consideration. I am sure the professional pundits consider a lot more than I did in this fairly simple analysis, but I just wanted to know what the polling averages would be if the only polls used are from non-biased, better quality, pollsters.

Before sharing the numbers I came up with, I will briefly explain my method. I started with 538.com’s list of polls from the last 5 weeks. Then, with the help of the “Pollster Ratings” tables from 538.com and Nate Silver’s “Silver Bulletin” website, I discarded all the polls that were done by pollsters that either have very low ratings or are not on their ratings lists at all. Then, I discarded all the pollsters that have known party connections (to either party) or other widely-recognized biases. For the remaining pollsters, I assigned them a weight, depending on their ratings. I also weighed each poll according to how recent it is. Here is the list of the pollsters that I did include in my calculations: Washington Post, Marist, Beacon/Fox, YouGov, Quinnipiac, Atlas, Marquette, UMass-Lowell, Suffolk, Muhlenberg, Data Orbital, Echelon, MassInc., Ipsos, Research Co., Data for Progress, Susquehanna, CNN, Florida Atlantic, Hart, Angus, High Point University, East Carolina, Elon College, Morning Consult, New York Times/Sienna,

Anyway, using my (imperfect) system: here are the numbers I came up with:

National Vote: Harris +3.23

Nevada: Harris +3.15

Wisconsin: Harris +1.72

Michigan: Harris +1.37

Pennsylvania: Harris +1.23

North Carolina: Harris -0.37

Georgia: Harris -1.62

Arizona: Harris -2.26

All of the above numbers, except for those of Georgia and Arizona, are somewhat better for Kamala than the aggregate numbers found on three pundit websites (that I have access to): Fivethirtyeight.com, JHKForcasts.Com, and Split-Ticket.org. The same is true for the website Racetothewh.com, except they have Harris at + 1.35 in Pennsylvania. Also, regarding Arizona, the only poll done by a reputable pollster in the last 3 weeks was done by NYT/Sienna, and that poll seems a bit suspect to me since it has, among likely voters, Harris losing by 5%, yet their poll taken on the same dates has Gallego winning by 7% [is this 12 point discrepancy even feasible?]

Of course, no one knows how far off, on average, the polls will be this year. In 2022, the polls underestimated the Democrats in Senate races by over 2% in most states, but in 2020 they overestimated Biden and the senate by something like 4%. I feel optimistic that, like in 2022, the polls are not accounting enough for Democratic enthusiasm this year; if that turns out to be the case, then it seems likely that Kamala would win all seven of the swing states, giving her 319 electoral votes.

Meanwhile, please do what you can in volunteering and support. You can find various ways to help here: www.mobilize.us

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