The New York Times recently released polling from a half-dozen political battleground states. President Joe Biden trails the serially indicted Donald Trump in five of six key states, according to the survey, and was barely ahead in the sixth.
A Democratic freakout ensued.
A new Los Angeles Times survey, conducted with the UC Berkeley Institute for Governmental Studies, will add to the angst. It shows for the first time in his presidency that a majority of California voters disapprove of Biden's job performance.
The polls make clear the current White House occupant--80, and very much looking his age--is vulnerable as he bids next year for a second term.
But polls cannot divine the future. Forecasting a presidential election a year out is like predicting the weather on Nov. 5, 2024. Good luck nailing the exact temperature.
Whit Ayres, who has spent decades polling and strategizing for Republican candidates, described the Democratic ticket of Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris as the weakest since that of George McGovern and Sargent Shriver, who were shellacked by President Nixon in 1972. But Ayres is not convinced Republicans will win the White House.
He's not even certain that Biden and Trump will be their respective party nominees, though it seems more likely than not.
"There are a lot of people who are making flat statements about what's going to happen ... that might turn out to be right but could just as likely turn out to be wrong," Ayres said, "because they're affected by events that haven't happened yet."
It's often said that a poll is a snapshot, a depiction of where a campaign stands at a particular moment in time. But a more apt description may be an oil painting, which requires a great many decisions about how a portrait is rendered.
Pollsters put a good deal of time and effort into figuring out how best to model their voter samples. That means once they finish interviewing respondents they weight the result to make sure it includes the correct share of men and women, young and old, and other groups, based on census data.
Neutral phrasing is crucial, as any biases--"Knowing Candidate X worships Satan and hates small children, would you vote for him?"--can badly skew the results.
Courtney Kennedy oversees methodology and computation for the Pew Research Center, which conducts in-depth surveys. The center does top-notch work, focusing on broader trends and attitudes, not the usual horse-race stuff.
"There's no barriers to being a pollster anymore," Kennedy said. "It used to be you had to have a brick-and-mortar shop and professional interviewers. Now anybody with a few thousand dollars could go to 100 different websites and, quote-unquote, 'do a national poll.' And so people do."
She suggests taking the margin of error and doubling it: Is the poll conducted by a political party, a candidate or a group pushing an agenda? Beware.
Is the sample size under 500 interviews? That's not a meaningful survey.
How long was the poll in the field interviewing voters? A longer time frame means a better chance of drawing a representative sample.
Is the poll conducted in English? That's pointless in places like California, Nevada, Florida or just about anywhere with a meaningful immigrant population.
Is the pollster willing to show his or her work, revealing how many interviews were conducted over what period of time and in which languages? Transparency is key.
There's a simpler solution: Ignore those who's-up-and-who's down polls.
There's a cliche--trotted out mostly by losing candidates in the final throes of their campaign--that the poll that matters most is the one on election day. It may be hackneyed, but there's a lot of truth to that.