The Swiss political scientist who has studied the unique dynamics of why incumbents win and lose told RedState the polling shifts toward Vice President Kamala Harris in the presidential campaign and away from former President Donald Trump are highly suspect.
“I would not be surprised if some voters would be lying to pollsters right now,” said Dr. Louis Perron, who earned his doctorate at the University of Zurich.
Perron, the author of Beat the Incumbent: Proven Strategies and Tactics to Win Elections, said it is natural for voters to present themselves as socially or morally acceptable.
“There is currently quite a media hype about Kamala in the mainstream media, so some voters might not want to admit that they won't vote for her,” he said. “In recent polls, she got more than 40 percent among white voters. I'm not saying it's impossible, but I believe it when I see it in November.”
This is one reason why polls in both the United Kingdom and the United States fail to capture the true support for conservative candidates, observed the political scientist who went to the University of Geneva for his undergraduate degree.
“There is a common pattern here with the shy Tory voter or the shy Trump voter,” he said. “There is a difference between public opinion — what people think — and the published opinion — what is published in the media. Some people are hesitant to speak out against the published opinion.”
The Real Clear Politics general election presidential poll is a basket of polls that functions as a moving average. As new polls are added to the basket, the old polls are dropped. This method smooths out spikes and, while lagging, presents a self-confirming picture of the race.
From Sept. 13, when Trump took a 45 percent to 44 percent lead over President Joe Biden, the former president held the advantage until Aug. 5, when Harris took the 48 percent to 47 percent lead.
The day Biden's handlers announced he was ending his reelection bid, July 21, Trump's advantage had expanded to 48 percent to Biden's 45 percent.
It is important to remember that national polls have a natural bias for Democrats because California and New York, which make up roughly 15 percent of the national population, are not contested, so Democrats racked up surplus votes there that do not change the Electoral College.
In one of his Aug. 17 “Race in the Race” YouTube presentations, Perron went into more detail about why poll participants would mislead pollsters:
When Barack Obama ran for President of the United States some 16 years ago, he snipped at his staff, saying that they were pretending that he's not black. "Of course, that's an issue," he apparently said.
Here we are in the year 2024, with the first African-American woman running for president in the U.S. And again, of course, that's an issue. I remember a Republican pollster from the Trafalgar Group famously saying: "The people lie to their spouse, they lie to their accountant and to their doctor. Why on God's earth would they tell over the phone to a stranger, in all honesty, who are they going to vote for?"
In the U.S., polling has really been off for several electoral cycles in a row, and it has a lot to do with the fact that Trump's appeal was underestimated.
Perron said in the post that poll respondents had a more permissive atmosphere to voice their support for Trump, when his opponent was Biden.
“It has long been my suspicion throughout this electoral year that Trump has been polling so well because the focus was on Joe Biden as the incumbent, and two, because pollsters have finally adjusted and stopped to underestimate him,” he said.
Perron’s central thesis is that the incumbent must deliver to his base as quickly as possible upon taking office, then pivot to repackaging his opposition’s ideas and policies as his own.
On the other hand, the incumbent challenger must create a binary choice with as little substance as policy, allowing the voters to project their own agenda onto the challenger.
“We're now no longer in a typical challenger versus incumbent race,” he said.
“Harris represents a different generation than Trump and Biden, but she was obviously part of the Biden-Harris administration and carried the weight,” he said.
“Both Trump and Harris have a claim to insider and outsider status.”