TPM Reader RM chimes in on Brexit, online polls and how American pollsters are dealing with the Trump phenomenon …
I think the flaw in the analysis is that the UK polls also missed the Conservative Party’s win in 2015. If you recall, Labour led coalitions led in virtually all polling up through election day in May 2015, but to those who followed the election, they saw the late movement to the Tories. The UK pollsters missed both times with the same voters: white English voters who live outside of England’s major cities. I do stress England, not Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland. “Leave” won by over 1 million votes in England (close to the actual % margin of victory). That margin was built outside of England’s major cities. UK pollsters think that their voters are more progressive than they actually are. US pollsters tend to be more conservative leaning in that sense.
In the GOP primary, the polling aggregates accurately captured Trump’s numbers in almost every race: north, south, east and west. At times they missed on the opponents (e.g., Cruz in Iowa), but rarely did they miss on Trump. The polls kept telling us Trump was going to win (even in Rubio’s home state of FL), but a lot of people refused to believe it. That’s the complete opposite of what happened in the UK.
So, I think US pollsters do have a pretty good read on the GOP electorate, and even with the more irregular voters who voted for Trump in this cycle. Where pollsters miss is on the Democratic side of the electorate due to the difficulty in predicting Democratic turnout and the minority vote. These polls consistently overstate the GOP share of the latino and Asian vote and understate the overall minority vote as a percentage of the national electorate. It’s going to be around 30% or so this year, maybe higher if Trump depresses turnout among traditional GOP voters and boosts minority and youth turnout. We’re seeing some results in places like Florida and North Carolina which suggest potentially easier than expected wins for Hillary Clinton (relatively speaking). This is due to some polls representing the diversity of the electorate and expecting a healthy turnout from all demos within that electorate.
In addition, one factor that seems to be overlooked is that Trump isn’t doing as well with white voters as compared to Romney. Romney had 60% of the white vote in 2012 per exit polls. Trump is hovering around 50%. The reason is that Trump is turning off a lot of white suburban voters who supported Romney in 2012. This will impact Trump in places like Fairfax County in VA or Bucks County in PA. Hillary Clinton has flipped the white female vote and has a lead , where Obama lost it by around 6 points. That translates to potentially larger than expected wins for Hillary Clinton because if Trump can’t even get to 60% of the white vote (he’s not even clearly above 50%) he would lose by a higher margin than Romney’s 4 point loss to Obama. Even if he got to that number in 2016, he’d still lose by a larger margin than did Romney.
