Trump & 2020: Pollster Sees Win Possible

The Trafalgar Group’s Robert Cahaly is an outlier among pollsters in that he thinks President Trump will carry Michigan, Pennsylvania, or both, and hence be reelected with roughly 280 electoral votes. (I explained his thinking here.) Last week another pollster, Jim Lee of Susquehanna Polling and Research, echoed some of Cahaly’s points about shy Trump voters being missed by pollsters. “There is definitely a submerged Trump vote,” Lee said. Asked for a prediction, he hedged a little but then predicted a Trump win: “I can’t call it. If the turnout is going to be what I think, Trump wins it.”

Lee goes further than some other analysts in suggesting that pollsters may be deliberately overstating the strength of Democratic candidates in order to dampen Republican turnout. In this press release, he calls it “the very definition of ‘voter suppression’” for a poll, by Franklin & Marshall College, to claim Hillary Clinton was ahead by eleven points among likely voters in surveys taken from October 26–30, 2016. He frankly calls this “liberal bias.” Yet, Lee notes, Franklin & Marshall and its lead pollster are still taken seriously by the media and cited as nonpartisan experts. He thinks there should be professional consequences for pollsters who are so wildly inaccurate as to raise serious questions about their impartiality.

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Kyle Smith

Kyle Smith is the film critic for the Wall Street Journal.

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The Trafalgar Group’s Robert Cahaly is an outlier among pollsters in that he thinks President Trump will carry Michigan, Pennsylvania, or both, and hence be reelected with roughly 280 electoral votes. (I explained his thinking here.) Last week another pollster, Jim Lee of Susquehanna Polling and Research, echoed some of Cahaly’s points about shy Trump voters being missed by pollsters. “There is definitely a submerged Trump vote,” Lee said. Asked for a prediction, he hedged a little but then predicted a Trump win: “I can’t call it. If the turnout is going to be what I think, Trump wins it.”

Lee goes further than some other analysts in suggesting that pollsters may be deliberately overstating the strength of Democratic candidates in order to dampen Republican turnout. In this press release, he calls it “the very definition of ‘voter suppression’” for a poll, by Franklin & Marshall College, to claim Hillary Clinton was ahead by eleven points among likely voters in surveys taken from October 26–30, 2016. He frankly calls this “liberal bias.” Yet, Lee notes, Franklin & Marshall and its lead pollster are still taken seriously by the media and cited as nonpartisan experts. He thinks there should be professional consequences for pollsters who are so wildly inaccurate as to raise serious questions about their impartiality.