On The Trail: Making sense of this week’s polling tsunami

In the midst of an unprecedented cascade of events that upend news cycles on a seemingly hourly basis, from a global pandemic to a sputtering economy, protests rocking American cities and a coming battle that could redefine the Supreme Court, the battle for the White House has remained remarkably stable.

Former Vice President Joe Biden holds a significant and steady lead over President Trump. Since capturing the Democratic nomination this spring, Biden’s lead in national surveys has never fallen below 4 points in the RealClearPolitics average. It briefly crested 10 points in late June, and it trades somewhere around 6 points today.

“It’s been a fairly stable polling cycle, despite these cataclysmic earthquakes — I shouldn’t say earthquakes, it’s probably the only thing we haven’t had,” said Lee Miringoff, who directs the Marist College Institute for Public Opinion. “The movement has been fairly undramatic. Biden has been ahead over Trump wire to wire.”

Pollsters have spent the busy weeks after Labor Day conducting dozens of surveys across the country. Since Sunday, 54 presidential polls have been released, surveys both of the national electorate and of voters in swing and even safe states.

On Wednesday alone, pollsters released four surveys of Florida voters, three in Arizona and two each in North Carolina and Pennsylvania.

Republican, Democratic and independent pollsters interviewed this week say the electorate is hardening, and fewer voters are open to any option other than the candidate they have already chosen. Even the introduction of a new variable into the race — a Supreme Court seat left vacant by the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg — has not moved the dial.

That has Republicans, especially, worried that a wave is building against them.

“Nothing is moving the numbers for Republicans,” said one Republican pollster, who asked for anonymity to speak candidly about his party’s prospects. “The GOP base of white voters without college degrees is not big enough, and we’ve done nothing to add any other coalition groups.”

Both Democrats and Republicans make the case that a Supreme Court fight could rally their voters — though polls show so many voters are excited and enthusiastic about voting that there appear to be few left to rally. If anything, the Republican pollster said, the open Supreme Court seat may hurt Republicans among independent women.

Democrats are still stung by 2016, when state surveys showed Hillary Clinton leading by a substantial margin until the closing days of the race. But Biden has reached the all-important 50-percent mark in polls in swing states like Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Nevada and even Ohio this week — an apex that Clinton did not manage in September polls four years ago.

What makes Republican pollsters most nervous is the degree to which their down-ballot candidates are tracking with Trump’s performance. Few Republicans are running substantially ahead of Trump in House and Senate races.

Polls conducted this week show Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine), Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), Martha McSally (R-Ariz.) and Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) trailing their Democratic opponents. Sen. Steve Daines (R-Mont.) is statistically tied with Gov. Steve Bullock (D).

Sen. David Perdue (R-Ga.) leads Democrat Jon Ossoff by slim margins, and he sits below 50 percent in three polls released this week. The race for the other Georgia Senate seat, held by appointed Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R), seems destined for a January runoff.

Even Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) is no shoo-in; he leads his Democratic opponent, MJ Hegar, by between 5 and 8 points, and he reached the critical 50 percent mark in just one of three Texas polls released in the last week.

The sheer volume of surveys conducted in recent weeks stands in stark contrast to 2016, when few bothered to survey electorates in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania — three traditionally Democratic states that broke against Clinton and for Trump in the race’s closing days.

Those states are not being ignored today.

In 2016, just two pollsters surveyed Wisconsin voters in September. So far this month, 10 surveys of Wisconsin voters have been released, and Miringoff plans to release an 11th this weekend. Biden has led all 10 polls released so far, by between 4 and 10 points.

Four years ago, Michigan voters were surveyed by five different public pollsters in September. Nine polls have been conducted there this year; Biden leads in all but one survey, conducted by a Republican pollster.

Seven polls of Pennsylvania voters are public this month, matching the total number of polls conducted in September 2016.

“People looked at 2016 and said there’s not enough polling,” said David Paleologos, who directs the Suffolk University Political Research Center. “You can never poll too many states.”

Indeed, this year pollsters are wandering further afield. The New York Times and Siena College, Colby College and the Boston Globe and Suffolk have all polled in Maine in the last two weeks. Usually safe Republican states like Montana, Missouri and Utah, and usually safe Democratic states like Maryland, California and Vermont, have all been surveyed lately.

Electorates in emerging battlegrounds like Texas, Georgia, Ohio and Iowa have been polled repeatedly in recent weeks. Paleologos said he will start surveying Arizona, perhaps the Biden campaign’s best chance to expand the map beyond a more traditional battleground, on Saturday.

The intense interest voters say they have in this year’s race is fueling some of those surveys. Pollsters are also benefiting from a more diverse array of survey methodologies, testing people online or via robocall in addition to the more costly method of live callers.

“I think you’re seeing a lot of polls in part because of the interest in the race and the news value. Also the mode of collecting data does not break the bank,” Miringoff said. “There’s a lot of polls that are not done using live interviewers, so those don’t get into the cost issues that the few of us who use live interviewers get into.”

On The Trail is a reported column by Reid Wilson, primarily focused on the 2020 elections.