Nobody trusts the polls these days — not even some pollsters.
“There are a lot of shitty polls out there,” said John Anzalone. And, added Greg Strimple, many hard-core Donald Trump voters aren’t responding to online surveys, which have become increasingly common.
They are two of America’s top political pollsters: Anzalone has done polling work for Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Strimple has polled for John McCain, Chris Christie and Rick Perry.
In a conversation with the Playbook Deep Dive podcast, the bipartisan pair of pollsters laid out their views on the state of the race and who exactly are the undecided voters that both Trump and Kamala Harris are spending millions of dollars to reach.
They also both predicted at least a modest resurgence in ticket-splitting, with some voters backing a Democrat for president and Republicans for Congress, or vice versa.
In fact, new polling suggests most swing state voters now expect Harris to win — a perception that Strimple said could benefit Republicans in House and Senate races: “People are saying, ‘We’re going to put Kamala Harris in the White House. We’re going to have a check and balance on her.’”
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity by Deep Dive Producer Kara Tabor and Senior Producer Alex Keeney. You can listen to the full Playbook Deep Dive podcast interview here:
Listen to this episode of Playbook Deep Dive on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
There’s been a lot of chatter about the accuracy of polls — if they’re able to capture Trump’s support, Black voters’ opinions and more. Why should people feel that the polls are more trustworthy now than they have been in some of the recent cycles?
John Anzalone: Well, they shouldn’t. Because there’s so many polls. Like a third of the [polling] companies — I don’t even know who they are. It doesn’t mean they aren’t good polls. But the fact is, there are a lot of shitty polls out there, and what Greg and I do for our candidates and our clients and our corporations is so much different than what media polls do. We spend a lot of money, a lot of effort and a lot of labor using multimodal methodologies so that we’re getting hard-to-reach voters. A lot of times what the media concerns are using aren’t the best methodology.
Greg Strimple: The big thing is that undecided voters vote, right? And so when people see tight races like this and you’re not paying attention to who’s undecided and how they could break, then all of a sudden you have a problem because you’re saying, “Oh, he was ahead 47, 46, he should win.” Well, no. So that’s one thing.
The second piece is there’s been a lot of progress — I speak to this as a Republican — by the use of cell phones and online surveys to address issues with Hispanic people and Black people in our samples. One of the challenges that I discovered was that if you do online surveys of Republicans, you’re going to get more of a country club Republican than a hardcore Trump conservative Republican. So many of these surveys are online, and there’s some bleed among Republican voters who are more centrist, against Trump. So if you have a whole bunch more of those types of voters in a survey sample, it’s going to suggest that Trump isn’t as strong as he is. His folks are not hard to get to on the phone but hard to get to online.
What are the ways in which you think that people could get this election completely wrong?
John Anzalone: I actually think it starts with bad polling. Now there’s a whole industry trying to influence the aggregators like FiveThirtyEight and RCP with shitty, biased polls. What I wish FiveThirtyEight and RCP would do is have a subset of their aggregators, which is just five or six really credible polls. I mean, The Wall Street Journal has a multimodal methodology. I helped co-found it. If you’re going to do one online poll, I would do Pew Research because they have their own panel. And then you can take, if you want, NBC, CBS and maybe Washington Post? CNN — I hate their methodology — so, I wouldn’t include it. Pick five really good polls, say you’re only going to put it in the aggregator if they use likely voters and use the voter file and use multimodal methodology so you have a real take of what’s going on.
Greg Strimple: One of the funniest things I think of is that Fox News uses someone who clearly doesn’t know how to survey and it always makes the Democrat look better.
John Anzalone: It’s true.
Greg Strimple: I think that’s hysterical. The other thing I would say is the far left and the far right dominate the conversation in American politics. The middle of the electorate is very different from them, and they’re going to see it through a different lens. And so much of what’s being talked about in news and who you bring on TV or you’re interviewing in a newspaper — they’re not the guys who are actually making the decision at the end. They’re weighing, “Do I want Kamala in charge of the economy or do I want to put up with four more years of Donald Trump?”
There are things going on in the country where people see Harris as Biden’s number two. For example, Hurricane Helene and the war in the Middle East. Is she bearing any of the blame for these tough issues?
John Anzalone: Part of the success of Kamala Harris is that people are viewing her as the Democratic nominee for president and not so much the vice president. They’ve learned all these things about her, whether it’s as a prosecutor or attorney general. They’ve learned a little bit more about when she was a U.S. senator. Now, if you look at the TV ads in the battleground states, what Trump is trying to do is bring people back to reminding them of “Bidenomics” and the border crossings, etc. But she’s actually kind of won the battle up until this point, five weeks out, and she’s reset this race. This is a race where Trump was plus 4. Now she’s plus two. That’s dramatic movement. She’s reset this race to what we’ve seen from the past two presidentials, where it’s a dead-even race.
Greg Strimple: The important thing, and this goes to John’s point, is this race is going to be defined as “change.” And either it’s going to be change from Biden and Harris on the economy and immigration that Trump is trying to do, or the thing that really works for Kamala Harris is to turn the page on all the B.S. that has consumed the country during the Biden and Trump years. Whatever candidate defines that better is going to win. I think that right now Trump is doing a better job at that.
John Anzalone: I’ll just put a little spin on the ball of what Greg was saying. I think how real voters are viewing change — and I think people saw this in the debate, but they’re also seeing it in her rallies, I think they’re seeing it in her public persona as well as her TV ads — she’s the future. And I think she’s winning on that.
Trump has different types of issues, which is easier for him to win on cost of living, right direction of the economy, things like that. She’s doing a good job of being part of the future. But also there’s this tension because people will always tell you in focus groups that [Trump] has some magic fairy dust and he’ll fix the economy.
Greg Strimple: I think that the Trump campaign, not Donald Trump himself, is doing exactly what they need to do message-wise, which is talk about her being too liberal on the economy, on immigration. So they’re doing that really well.
The problem is their candidate, Donald Trump, is out there reminding everyone why they have PTSD from his four years as president. So if you took Donald Trump out of the picture and sent him to an island, I think you would actually win. The flipside to that is, Kamala Harris is doing a very good job of being the face of the campaign. Her campaign ads are terrible and the Democrats are talking about issues when they should be talking about the fact that Donald Trump is irrational, erratic, out of control, January 6th, all these things — and they’re not doing it. So they’re not focusing on Donald Trump’s negatives. And to the extent they are, they’re implicit, not explicit. I don’t think subtle contrasts work in American politics. Unless you’re taking a two-by-four to the other person’s head, you’re not going to be advancing.
John Anzalone: I do believe that it’s super important to ignite PTSD with voters about Donald Trump and his behavior and the anxiety, quite frankly, that he created during his administration. I mean, people would wake up and like, “What did he say? What did he do on Twitter?” And I think that you’re going to see plenty of that.
Big picture, have either of you seen a race that’s so resistant to big swings in polling, other than Biden dropping out? There weren’t really convention bounces; Trump didn’t get a big bounce from either of the assassination attempts; there haven’t been these big debate bounces. What does it tell you about the electorate when the race looks so static?
John Anzalone: This has been some of the biggest movement in modern presidential history. I mean, Trump was plus four. Now she’s plus two. That’s a six-point swing.
But since she’s been in?
John Anzalone: Well, no, that’s since she’s been in.
But I think a bigger point is that what she did prior to the convention was her convention bounce. She consolidated the Democrats. She actually also moved women and independent-leaning Democrats and some independents. So people are now saying she’s stalled. No, she hasn’t stalled. What has happened is she reset the campaign to what the last three presidential campaigns have been, which is basically dead-even races. So now, both candidates are fighting for a super small universe of voters. And that is modern politics today.
I think that the difference that we see is that for the first time, the enthusiasm or motivation level for the Harris voter is now actually a little higher than that of the Trump voter, which again, tells me she moved young people double digits, African Americans double digits, Latinos double digits. She’s moved women and again, independent-leaning Democrats a good amount as well. This is about changing the math of the electorate.
Greg Strimple: There is a ton of internal movement going on. The most important thing I saw in the Cook Political Report polling was that in the last survey we did, people thought that Donald Trump was going to win. In this survey, they think Kamala Harris is going to win. So that also shifts the dynamic down ballot, because in this world of checks and balances and how voters do things, I think it’s going to actually help the Republicans in the House and the Senate.
But the big thing that John’s talking about is there’s a giant gender gap. The Cook stuff was 19 points. That’s huge. And what I always look at in my world is what’s happening with independent females, independent suburban females, and how are they moving. And one of the things I’d be a little concerned about for Kamala Harris, particularly in the Blue Wall states, is she is starting to have a little bit of erosion among those independents because of what’s going on with her attacks on economics. So I think that she really needs to be in the position now, if she wants to win, to go after those challenges that Donald Trump has with his style and brand.
Let’s jump into that. Who in the hell are the persuadable voters at this point?
John Anzalone: What we tend to see is that these persuadable, undecided, swing voters — whatever you want to call them — tend to be under 50, independent, disproportionately non-college-educated, disproportionately female, disproportionately white. Although there’s a universe of people of color as well.
Greg Strimple: I’d just add I think there’s two groups that we should be talking about. And they’re both small, but in a razor-tight election, they both matter. One is: Who’s voting for the third party candidates? And since RFK came out and endorsed Trump and is trying to take his name off the ballot, there’s still people voting for him. And so that group of voters is important, because over half of them in the last election voted for Donald Trump. And their big concern is these personality issues. In the research we just did, they were more lower-income, labor-oriented, Blue Wall state voters.
John’s 100 percent correct about what the demographics look like in those swing voters. But they are conflicted because they really think the economy’s terrible. They are really concerned about Kamala versus Trump on the economy. But at the same time, they don’t like the felonies. They don’t like the temperament. They don’t like all of those things about Trump. And so they’re either going to decide this race on economics or they’re going to decide it on, “Can we do four more years of Trump and his kind of antics?”
John Anzalone: I think it’s a little more complicated than that. I don’t think there’s two groups. I think there’s 50 groups, because I think when you win an election at 45,000 votes in three states and then 75,000 votes in three states, and two of those states were different in ’16 versus ’20, the fact is that this is going to be won on the margins. And so there’s 10 or 15 or 20 demographic groups you want to be careful about.
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We talk about Trump and the issues that women voters have with him, but Harris also has a big problem with young men, right? What does the data you’re looking at say about this trend for her and for Democrats?
Greg Strimple: I think that obviously the biggest challenge she has is with African American men under 50.
John Anzalone: Greg, I don’t know if you agree, but this dynamic predates her. This movement with younger men predates her, just like the share of African Americans going down. Look at Georgia, where you had an African American U.S. Senate candidate on the Democratic and Republican side and an African American Democratic gubernatorial candidate who came very close in ’18. And participation among African Americans went down.
But that doesn’t mean that there’s not the opportunity to expand or build on what Biden did in 2020 in Georgia. I’m very high on Georgia. You know, 29 percent African American. Highest rate of growth with Hispanic and Asian Americans. Just to give you a comparison, North Carolina on a good day, 19 percent of the electorate will be African American. Much fewer white, non-college educated voters in Georgia, etc.
Greg Strimple: You talked about the gender gap, right? And it’s growing. And so the most hardcore Trump group is white men 55-plus. The second hardest is men underneath 55. And it’s really, I think, part of the broader divergence between men and women in the country.
John Anzalone: The gender gap is fascinating across demographic groups. Among Latino men in Arizona, a majority are voting for Trump.
What does that gender divide say about the country? Is this about the candidates, the issues each party is talking about, or a trend that’s been unfolding over time?
John Anzalone: I think there’s so many variables. I think with Latinos, we’re seeing a dynamic not unlike my parents who my grandparents were from Sicily, and they spoke Sicilian — and my parents, first generation, they just wanted to be American. And so I think we tend to, especially the media, look at Latinos as homogeneous. And I think we’ve failed to realize that there’s first, second and third generation Latinos who are American, and they act like Americans. And guess what? A big universe of Americans are Republican.
Greg Strimple: One of the things I saw in the 2020 election — I was doing work for Sen. Cornyn in Texas — Latinos started really moving for Cornyn and Trump during all of the Black Lives Matter versus cops debate. And then one of the big pieces that moved them again was when Biden comes out and says we’re going to eliminate fossil fuels. And a lot of these guys work in the oil industry. So there’s an economic and also a social fabric piece that I think that you’re seeing Hispanics diverge from the Democratic Party on.
This new Cook Political Report swing state survey that you worked on shows Harris leading or tied with Trump in all but one of seven battleground states. Biden and his team felt the Blue Wall was all they had. That’s expanded since Harris, but there are some folks like Elissa Slotkin, who’s running for Senate in Michigan, who are a little worried about the Blue Wall for Harris.
Greg Strimple: I’m actually interested in asking John this question because I just looked at his work that he did for AARP in Pennsylvania. And my takeaway from John’s work was that it looks like Donald Trump probably loses Pennsylvania, but there’s a chance that Republicans win that Senate seat. I thought that was a more likely scenario than the opposite. I think that this year, Michigan is, of those three states, the most wanting to vote Republican. I think that one of the big comebacks that she’s had since she’s become the nominee is putting that state back in play for the Democrats. That’s a state with a large Islamic population, Arab population that could really impact the race. These voters are also more economically sensitive in these three states. And that’s, again, why I think she’s at risk if Trump continues on this economic message and moving her to the left and being part of the problem on cost of living and inflation.
John Anzalone: I don’t disagree with any of that. Listen, I do [polling for] Gretchen Whitmer. I grew up in Michigan, went to college in Michigan, and my firm does [polling for] Elissa Slotkin. And the fact is that of all the battleground states, over 50 percent — I think 52 percent — of the electorate is white, working class, non-college educated. Clearly it’s a volatile situation with the Arab-American population, which is the largest Arab-American population [in the country] and centered around Dearborn.
I think that the one thing that Trump has done brilliantly, unfortunately, is that he’s used the electric vehicle issue as a cudgel to scare white working-class voters, especially in the auto industry. If you lose Michigan, you can make it up in Georgia. And so you have to think strategically about where you go if you happen to lose one of the Blue Wall states that’s not Pennsylvania.
Should the Harris folks be worried about the Sun Belt? It is a place where they’re spending a lot of time, money and effort obviously.
John Anzalone: Well, she’s spent a lot of time there. She’s been in Atlanta. She’s been to Savannah. Some of these university polls that you mentioned, I don’t particularly agree with, I think that Georgia is close to dead even. I think that North Carolina is a couple of points for Trump.
Greg Strimple: I don’t know what you’re defining as Sun Belt, but I think one of the big states that has come back for Kamala that I thought was going to be gone for Biden was Nevada. Kudos to the Democrats in both Arizona and Nevada in the Senate races, because they’ve gone out and they’ve really kind of destroyed the two Republican candidates running for Senate there. I think it’s interesting how big the deltas are between Kari Lake and Donald Trump.
John Anzalone: Jacky Rosen has exceeded expectations and kept that race at a very comfortable lead above the margin of error pretty much all of 2024. When Biden was on the ticket, our AARP poll had Trump plus seven, Rosen plus five. That’s a 12-point delta. Now of course, it’s different now with Harris, and Harris is doing much better. But I do think one of the storylines after the election is going to be a slight rebounding of ticket splitters.
What does it tell you, not just that ticket splitters might be back, but that voters are looking at these Senate and presidential candidates differently in a world where we are so polarized?
John Anzalone: There’s so much money spent on defining U.S. Senate candidates now that people are looking at them singularly, some compared to the presidential campaign. I think 2022 kind of reset how people look at this, because it was the first time you had so many extreme Republicans, especially on abortion, when they were wanting to ban it even in the case of rape, incest and life of the mother, we’d kind of never seen that. And so there was some good differentiation there.
Greg Strimple: I think that we might start seeing a lot of these Republican races down ticket moving to the Republican side because people are saying, “We’re going to put Kamala Harris in the White House. We’re going to have a check and balance on her.”
John Anzalone: I also think that in these Senate races, there tends to be a bigger universe of persuadable voters than the presidential. September is a Democratic month and October is the Republican month in these U.S. Senate and congressionals. And that’s where things start to tighten.
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