It’s a question we seem to ask every election season: Is Trafalgar seeing something nobody else is, or is it seeing something that isn’t there? The right-leaning polling firm run by Robert Cahaly made its reputation in 2016 by its ability to find Republican voters — especially the sorts of voters most favorable to Donald Trump — that other pollsters missed. Trafalgar has not had a spotless record, and its periodic failures have tended in the direction of overestimating Republicans, with its most conspicuous recent flop being polls that showed the California recall of Gavin Newsom a competitive race well after other pollsters were seeing a heavy shift toward base Democratic turnout. Still, Trafalgar’s many successes command respect when the pollster is breaking with the pack, notably its projection of a tight race for New Jersey governor last fall, which led to mea culpas from at least one of the firm’s rivals.
The question arises again from two polls suggesting particular optimism for deep-blue-state Republicans. One is a poll from Washington State showing challenger Tiffany Smiley down by just three points, 49 percent to 46 percent, to five-term incumbent Patty Murray. The last two polls in the race, taken in July, showed Murray up by 18 and 20 points, respectively. The other is a poll from New York, done in conjunction with Insider Advantage, showing Congressman Lee Zeldin trailing Governor Kathy Hochul by five points, 49 percent to 43 percent. The previous three polls showed Hochul up 14, 16, and 24 points, respectively. In a good Republican environment, both Smiley and Zeldin are in position to make a winning move down the stretch run if their current position is where Trafalgar has them; if they are really down by high double-digit margins, they are already toast. Notably, Trafalgar’s polls are large samples (over 1,000 respondents each), and both report a significant Democratic advantage in who the poll respondents are: an 11-point edge in Washington (44 percent Democrats, 33 percent Republicans, 22 percent independents), and a whopping 26-point edge in New York (54 percent Democrats, 28 percent Republicans, 19 percent independents). Typically of Trafalgar polls, which aim to capture voters who won’t participate in other polls, the questionnaire is short, with no voter feedback on issues, and crosstabs showing support among different groups are not released with the poll. You either trust Trafalgar based on its track record, or not.
There are different cases to be made for what might be happening in these states. The optimistic case for Republicans is the national case (the undertow of Biden’s unpopularity, a difficult economy, and Democrats poorly positioned on culture-tinged issues such as crime and education) plus the particular problems of crime, disorder, and leftist insanity locally in each state. The pessimistic case is that abortion in particular will make it harder for deep-blue-state Republicans to capitalize on those factors, and that — in New York in particular — a lot of the voters Zeldin needs have moved out of the state to Florida or other redder states since 2020.