Morning Consult Tracking 2024 is a biweekly newsletter analyzing our high-frequency data on the key trends, candidates, voter groups and issues that will decide who controls the White House and Congress in 2025 and beyond.
You can subscribe here.
That pesky margin of error
We live in a prolific era for election polling that comes as communication travels faster than ever. Meanwhile, the discourse around these surveys and what they mean for the election is largely taking place on X, a social media platform that doesn’t exactly make space for nuanced conversation to flourish.
That helps explain why so much of the conversation around survey results tends to neglect the inherent uncertainty around them, even when most of the research firms behind these polls are transparent about sampling error. Posts that trumpet “Harris +7 in Nevada!” spread quickly online, with virtually no one pointing out that based on the survey’s margin of error, the vice president could actually be trailing.
That brings me to this chart, which shows the results from our latest monthly swing-state tracking with Bloomberg News.
What you see above is the actual topline result of our surveys versus a possible interpretation if the error breaks Trump’s way in each state. Each survey had a margin of sampling error of 3 or 4 percentage points. That error applies to each candidates’ share of support.
As you can see, it’s very easy to look at those toplines and come to the conclusion that Trump is actually leading Harris across the Electoral College battlegrounds. And that’s before taking into account the possibility that undecided voters could ultimately break in Trump’s favor, further tilting the playing field in his direction.
The former president benefited from a fairly normal polling error in 2016, and won. He benefited from a historic polling error in 2020, and lost. As I’ve written before, there’s no guarantee or reason to assume that polling error will break Trump’s way at all this year, let alone to the extent that it did four years ago. But we can’t rule out that he will be the beneficiary of a polling error that makes him the winner.
That’s why this election is a toss-up — and why much of the online discourse about polling results this election cycle deserves a more critical look between now and Election Day.
Cameron Easley is Morning Consult’s lead analyst for U.S. politics. Prior to moving into his current role, he led Morning Consult's editorial coverage of U.S. politics and elections from 2016 through 2022. Cameron joined Morning Consult from Roll Call, where he was managing editor. He graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Follow him on Twitter @cameron_easley. Interested in connecting with Cameron to discuss his analysis or for a media engagement or speaking opportunity? Email [email protected].
