Radio Free America: Why polls probably aren’t overstating Democrats this time

Welcome to Radio Free America, Aaron Kleinman’s newsletter on stories that matter in state politics but aren’t getting enough attention. Want this newsletter delivered to your inbox each week? Sign up!

Democrats seem headed for their best election night in at least two decades and they seem terrified. But you can’t really blame them; they’ve been burned before, especially in 2016 and 2020. So I wanted to see what we could learn from when polls missed during the Trump Era.

First of all, polls have actually been pretty accurate in the past two midterm elections. Meet the Press did a story on polling misses, and while you can watch the whole thing, you really only need this still to figure out what’s going on.

So while there have been big misses in presidential elections, the midterm election polls have been more or less spot on. Which makes sense — a midterm election is less likely to draw out irregular voters than a presidential election.

But what if this is the year that midterm polls get borked the way that presidential ones did? Let’s take a look at the methodological reasons why those presidential numbers were off:

2016: National polls actually weren’t too far off, but state level polls’ failure to weight voters to educational attainment overstated Hillary Clinton’s strength in the Blue Wall.  Also, late deciders ended up breaking against Clinton. (Thank you, James Comey! Keep posting Instagram pictures of seashells so we know you’re living your best life!)

2020: The best theory on this is that Republicans who were voting Democratic were far more likely to respond to surveys during the pandemic than those who were staying Republican. Though if you’d like, you can handwave it away with “COVID drove everyone insane.”

2024: The error was smaller in 2024 than previous presidential cycles, but it seems like pollsters still had trouble reaching voters least likely to turn out.

The 2016 errors seem to have been fixed, but there could still be a miss similar to 2020 and 2024 because polls are having trouble reaching erratic voters in a midterm election. While pollsters are constantly working to avoid this again, analyst G. Elliott Morris found that surveys that ask more questions tend to be more bullish for Democrats. So it could be that once again polls are overstating their support.

But if there’s going to be a polling miss, there should be a theory of why it misses. In 2020, we should have known that maybe Trump would overperform when the stimmies kept our bank balances robust, while in 2024, we should have been less sanguine about Kamala Harris’s ability to distinguish herself from Joe Biden. 

The Downballot put out a chart that I cited a few weeks ago showing how a variety of indicators compared to 2018, so let’s update it to refer back to 2024 and 2020 as well.

Indicator on 10/13	2026	2024	2020
Special Elections	D +12	D +8	D +6
Party ID	D +10	R +1	D +5
Presidential Approval	Trump -25	Biden -16	Trump -13
Right Track/Wrong Track	Wrong +36	Wrong +30	Wrong +30
Current Economy	Bad +37	Bad +17	Bad +14

It sure doesn’t seem like an environment where a polling miss would overstate Democratic support again. Rather, the case for Republicans in 2026 is that low propensity voters will still turn out for the GOP, even though they seem to think the economy is worse now and fewer identify as Republicans than in 2024 or 2020. And that right-leaning voters who care about anti-trans bigotry more than gas prices are uniquely unlikely to respond to surveys. Possible? I guess. Likely? I don’t think so.

But what if the polls are wrong in the other direction? Looking at the table above, it sure seems like polls (which only have them down eight points) are actually the best indicator Republicans have right now. Especially now that their vaunted money advantage seems to be slipping away.

I’m not saying a blue wave is certain. Polls could tighten as reluctant Republicans decide to come home. With the exception of North Carolina, the Senate seats that Democrats need to flip are in the margin of error, and polls in Michigan are still pretty close, too. A small shift toward Republicans could turn the wave into a ripple. But last December, before Trump invaded the Twin Cities and Iran, I wrote that an election where Democrats won by double digits looked possible. I still do.

AROUND AMERICA

• I have some questions about the conference room at Weldall Manufacturing, where Wisconsin Republican gubernatorial nominee Tom Tiffany held his small business roundtable. Looks like they got it surplus from the set of “Digger.”

• If Democrats manage to flip North Carolina’s 34th Senate seat in rabidly suburbanizing Cabarrus County, Republican nominee Kevin Crutchfield saying a 12-week abortion ban was a first step in a near total ban will be a big reason why.

• Big Dom? More like Big Dem! The popular Eagles security chief spoke at the party’s fall dinner.

• If you’re like me, you’ve been to a bar in Pennsylvania. And if you’re like me, you’ve wondered what a skills game is and, upon closer investigation, decided it’s a bad idea to have gambling reliant on fine motor skills in an establishment that serves alcohol. Well, now owing to a big legislative and legal fight that’s seen millions of dollars spent by both sides, they’re being seized from bars as lawmakers try to figure out if there’s a way to address their legality in a lame duck session. Or, as Internet gadfly Ironghazi put it…

• The Florida attorney general race is getting interesting, as the Democratic Attorney General Association announced a $5 million investment in it on behalf of José Javier Rodriguez, a former state senator denied re-election through an illegal scheme masterminded by Marco Rubio’s former housemate. He’s up against Ron DeSantis hatchet man James Uthmeier, who was appointed to the seat when Ashley Moody was appointed to fill Rubio’s position in the Senate. Uthmeier may be vulnerable in part because his previous support of the Church of Scientology is becoming an issue in the Clearwater area.

• Far-right U.S. Rep. Andy Biggs has struggled to gain traction against incumbent Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs, in part because he’s hounded by his record of protecting child sexual abusers.

---

INTERNET STUFF I LIKED THIS WEEK

How hard can it be to make an Oscar-winning film? If you play enough Tentpole, you’ll soon find it’s actually pretty simple. Just get Peter Jackson on the line, team him up with some A-list Oscar nominees, give him an adventure and BAM, it’s your name they’re calling out at the Dolby Theatre. And there are Easter eggs for true cineastes when they do things like team up Martin Scorsese and Alec Baldwin. You can try to make duds as well, as if you land on one of the “Naked Gun” movies, you can put a certain late NFL running back on your cast.

---

BOOK CLUB

Men. What’s their deal? Do they have thoughts or dreams? Are they capable of a theory of mind? Can they read? Can they read books? Or do they just learn about books from LL Cool J when he goes on Joe Rogan’s podcast to talk about von Clausewitz?

These are the questions that Ross Barkan seeks to answer in his presumably unplagiarized article on the sudden popularity of “Lonesome Dove.” Personally, I’d rather not infantilize men. After all, many men have made priceless contributions to literature, from Goethe to Matt Christopher.

So instead, I’ll recommend a book to all the men out there who may be worried that reading will lower your testosterone to a level that would threaten your combat readiness. Sebastian Barry’s “Days Without End” is a dude-heavy story about two manly men who become soldiers in the Civil War and the Old West. It takes some unexpected turns, so I don’t want to spoil the plot at all. Get it for your MAGA relatives too, maybe it’ll get them interested in books!

---

HELP US OUT

Thank you all for your sartorial tips last week. As it turns out, my clear glasses frames (described by a store clerk as “on sale”) don’t register well visually, so I should get a new pair.

Speaking of that, where do you guys get your glasses? Right now, I go to a shop that I chose because 1) I had a gift certificate, 2) they’re near my kid’s school and 3) they have my prescription, which I don’t have on my computer. Trumpflation’s killing my bank account, though. Is one of those online options better? Should I just do the Warby Parker thing and look like Drew Carey in the mid-’90s? Email me, because I need help!

Want this newsletter delivered to your inbox each week? Sign up!