Nobody trusts the polls these days � not even some pollsters.

�There are a lot of shitty polls out there,� said John Anzalone. And,
added Greg Strimple, many hard-core Donald Trump voters aren�t
responding to online surveys, which have become increasingly common.

They are two of America�s top political pollsters: Anzalone has done
polling work for Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Strimple
has polled for John McCain, Chris Christie and Rick Perry.

In a conversation with the Playbook Deep Dive podcast, the bipartisan
pair of pollsters laid out their views on the state of the race and who
exactly are the undecided voters that both Trump and Kamala Harris are
spending millions of dollars to reach.

They also both predicted at least a modest resurgence in ticket-
splitting, with some voters backing a Democrat for president and
Republicans for Congress, or vice versa.

In fact, new polling suggests most swing state voters now expect Harris
to win � a perception that Strimple said could benefit Republicans in
House and Senate races: �People are saying, �We�re going to put Kamala
Harris in the White House. We�re going to have a check and balance on
her.��

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity by Deep Dive
Producer Kara Tabor and Senior Producer Alex Keeney. You can listen to
the full Playbook Deep Dive podcast interview here:

There�s been a lot of chatter about the accuracy of polls � if they�re
able to capture Trump�s support, Black voters� opinions and more. Why
should people feel that the polls are more trustworthy now than they
have been in some of the recent cycles?

John Anzalone: Well, they shouldn�t. Because there�s so many polls.
Like a third of the [polling] companies � I don�t even know who they
are. It doesn�t mean they aren�t good polls. But the fact is, there are
a lot of shitty polls out there, and what Greg and I do for our
candidates and our clients and our corporations is so much different
than what media polls do. We spend a lot of money, a lot of effort and
a lot of labor using multimodal methodologies so that we�re getting
hard-to-reach voters. A lot of times what the media concerns are using
aren�t the best methodology.

Greg Strimple: The big thing is that undecided voters vote, right? And
so when people see tight races like this and you�re not paying
attention to who�s undecided and how they could break, then all of a
sudden you have a problem because you�re saying, �Oh, he was ahead 47,
46, he should win.� Well, no. So that�s one thing.

The second piece is there�s been a lot of progress � I speak to this as
a Republican � by the use of cell phones and online surveys to address
issues with Hispanic people and Black people in our samples. One of the
challenges that I discovered was that if you do online surveys of
Republicans, you�re going to get more of a country club Republican than
a hardcore Trump conservative Republican. So many of these surveys are
online, and there�s some bleed among Republican voters who are more
centrist, against Trump. So if you have a whole bunch more of those
types of voters in a survey sample, it�s going to suggest that Trump
isn�t as strong as he is. His folks are not hard to get to on the phone
but hard to get to online.

What are the ways in which you think that people could get this
election completely wrong?

John Anzalone: I actually think it starts with bad polling. Now there�s
a whole industry trying to influence the aggregators like
FiveThirtyEight and RCP with shitty, biased polls. What I wish
FiveThirtyEight and RCP would do is have a subset of their aggregators,
which is just five or six really credible polls. I mean, The Wall
Street Journal has a multimodal methodology. I helped co-found it. If
you�re going to do one online poll, I would do Pew Research because
they have their own panel. And then you can take, if you want, NBC, CBS
and maybe Washington Post? CNN � I hate their methodology � so, I
wouldn�t include it. Pick five really good polls, say you�re only going
to put it in the aggregator if they use likely voters and use the voter
file and use multimodal methodology so you have a real take of what�s
going on.

Greg Strimple: One of the funniest things I think of is that Fox News
uses someone who clearly doesn�t know how to survey and it always makes
the Democrat look better.

John Anzalone: It�s true.

Greg Strimple: I think that�s hysterical. The other thing I would say
is the far left and the far right dominate the conversation in American
politics. The middle of the electorate is very different from them, and
they�re going to see it through a different lens. And so much of what�s
being talked about in news and who you bring on TV or you�re
interviewing in a newspaper � they�re not the guys who are actually
making the decision at the end. They�re weighing, �Do I want Kamala in
charge of the economy or do I want to put up with four more years of
Donald Trump?�

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There are things going on in the country where people see Harris as
Biden�s number two. For example, Hurricane Helene and the war in the
Middle East. Is she bearing any of the blame for these tough issues?

John Anzalone: Part of the success of Kamala Harris is that people are
viewing her as the Democratic nominee for president and not so much the
vice president. They�ve learned all these things about her, whether
it�s as a prosecutor or attorney general. They�ve learned a little bit
more about when she was a U.S. senator. Now, if you look at the TV ads
in the battleground states, what Trump is trying to do is bring people
back to reminding them of �Bidenomics� and the border crossings, etc.
But she�s actually kind of won the battle up until this point, five
weeks out, and she�s reset this race. This is a race where Trump was
plus 4. Now she�s plus two. That�s dramatic movement. She�s reset this
race to what we�ve seen from the past two presidentials, where it�s a
dead-even race.

Greg Strimple: The important thing, and this goes to John�s point, is
this race is going to be defined as �change.� And either it�s going to
be change from Biden and Harris on the economy and immigration that
Trump is trying to do, or the thing that really works for Kamala Harris
is to turn the page on all the B.S. that has consumed the country
during the Biden and Trump years. Whatever candidate defines that
better is going to win. I think that right now Trump is doing a better
job at that.

John Anzalone: I�ll just put a little spin on the ball of what Greg was
saying. I think how real voters are viewing change � and I think people
saw this in the debate, but they�re also seeing it in her rallies, I
think they�re seeing it in her public persona as well as her TV ads �
she�s the future. And I think she�s winning on that.

Trump has different types of issues, which is easier for him to win on
cost of living, right direction of the economy, things like that. She�s
doing a good job of being part of the future. But also there�s this
tension because people will always tell you in focus groups that
[Trump] has some magic fairy dust and he�ll fix the economy.

Greg Strimple: I think that the Trump campaign, not Donald Trump
himself, is doing exactly what they need to do message-wise, which is
talk about her being too liberal on the economy, on immigration. So
they�re doing that really well.

The problem is their candidate, Donald Trump, is out there reminding
everyone why they have PTSD from his four years as president. So if you
took Donald Trump out of the picture and sent him to an island, I think
you would actually win. The flipside to that is, Kamala Harris is doing
a very good job of being the face of the campaign. Her campaign ads are
terrible and the Democrats are talking about issues when they should be
talking about the fact that Donald Trump is irrational, erratic, out of
control, January 6th, all these things � and they�re not doing it. So
they�re not focusing on Donald Trump�s negatives. And to the extent
they are, they�re implicit, not explicit. I don�t think subtle
contrasts work in American politics. Unless you�re taking a two-by-four
to the other person�s head, you�re not going to be advancing.

John Anzalone: I do believe that it�s super important to ignite PTSD
with voters about Donald Trump and his behavior and the anxiety, quite
frankly, that he created during his administration. I mean, people
would wake up and like, �What did he say? What did he do on Twitter?�
And I think that you�re going to see plenty of that.

Big picture, have either of you seen a race that�s so resistant to big
swings in polling, other than Biden dropping out? There weren�t really
convention bounces; Trump didn�t get a big bounce from either of the
assassination attempts; there haven�t been these big debate bounces.
What does it tell you about the electorate when the race looks so
static?