Are the polls underestimating Donald Trump's support this year? Not according to CNN's Harry Enten. Last week, he dismissed the idea that the same political party would beat polling expectations in three consecutive presidential cycles across key battleground states. “It’s never happened. Zero times since 1972,” he said. “What normally happens is the pollsters catch on… they make adjustments.” 

Why do I bring this up? Well, the final New York Times/Siena poll was released Sunday, and it’s another doozy. “Usually, the final polls point toward a relatively clear favorite, even if that candidate doesn’t go on to win,” notes New York Times chief political analyst Nate Cohn. “This will not be one of those elections.”

According to the poll, Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are locked in a virtual tie across seven critical battleground states, where neither candidate holds a decisive lead. Trump leads in Arizona by four points, while Harris holds a slight one-point edge in Georgia. In Michigan, Trump has a narrow one-point advantage, while Harris is up by three in both Nevada and North Carolina. Pennsylvania remains evenly split, and Harris leads by three in Wisconsin.

If you can’t do the math in your head, let me tell you what this poll claims. According to this poll, Kamala Harris would win the presidency without winning Pennsylvania. In fact, she wouldn’t need Michigan either.

Based on NYT polls, Harris wins the Electoral College even without PA and MI. Feel free to bookmark this.https://t.co/AyeWD55S5T pic.twitter.com/yr5jYFmiHu

— Tom Bevan (@TomBevanRCP) November 3, 2024

Democrats certainly would love to see this pan out. But Nate Cohn actually put a rather significant disclaimer on these results.

“Four years ago, the polls were thought to underestimate Mr. Trump because of nonresponse bias — in which his supporters were less likely to take surveys than demographically similar Biden supporters,” he explained.

“It’s hard to measure nonresponse bias — after all, we couldn’t reach these demographically similar voters — but one measure I track from time to time is the proportion of Democrats or Republicans who respond to a survey, after considering other factors,” he continued. “Across these final polls, white Democrats were 16 percent likelier to respond than white Republicans. That’s a larger disparity than our earlier polls this year, and it’s not much better than our final polls in 2020 — even with the pandemic over. It raises the possibility that the polls could underestimate Mr. Trump yet again.”

Cohn notes that they do try to account for non-response bias, “but in the end there are no guarantees.”

That's a rather stunning admission for two reasons. First, it tells us that he's not particularly confident in the poll results. Frankly, I wouldn't be either. Are Georgia and North Carolina really going to vote to the left of Pennsylvania? I'm not buying that. In light of early voting numbers showing strong showings for Trump in Nevada, Georgia, and North Carolina, something seems wrong about these states all going blue. 

More often than not, you would expect a pollster to stand behind their poll results, not put a big, fat asterisk on their results.

But Cohn's admission brings up another issue entirely. If he is observing nonresponse bias in his polling, then you can bet that he's not the only one. So, it stands to reason that other pollsters must be experiencing it as well, which means there's a very good chance Trump will outperform the polls this year.

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