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?�

MOST READ
koreas-tensions-yoon-48460.jpg
Harris punches back at Huckabee Sanders: �This is not the 1950s
anymore�
�A temper tantrum from a deranged fanatic�
What the Polls Are Really Saying
Kamala Harris Is Losing Support With This Key Demographic. It Could
Cost Her Georgia.
Supreme Court won�t hear case stemming from Jack Smith�s secret warrant
for Trump�s Twitter data
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?

John Anzalone: This has been some of the biggest movement in modern
presidential history. I mean, Trump was plus four. Now she�s plus two.
That�s a six-point swing.

But since she�s been in?

John Anzalone: Well, no, that�s since she�s been in.

But I think a bigger point is that what she did prior to the convention
was her convention bounce. She consolidated the Democrats. She actually
also moved women and independent-leaning Democrats and some
independents. So people are now saying she�s stalled. No, she hasn�t
stalled. What has happened is she reset the campaign to what the last
three presidential campaigns have been, which is basically dead-even
races. So now, both candidates are fighting for a super small universe
of voters. And that is modern politics today.

I think that the difference that we see is that for the first time, the
enthusiasm or motivation level for the Harris voter is now actually a
little higher than that of the Trump voter, which again, tells me she
moved young people double digits, African Americans double digits,
Latinos double digits. She�s moved women and again, independent-leaning
Democrats a good amount as well. This is about changing the math of the
electorate.

Greg Strimple: There is a ton of internal movement going on. The most
important thing I saw in the Cook Political Report polling was that in
the last survey we did, people thought that Donald Trump was going to
win. In this survey, they think Kamala Harris is going to win. So that
also shifts the dynamic down ballot, because in this world of checks
and balances and how voters do things, I think it�s going to actually
help the Republicans in the House and the Senate.

But the big thing that John�s talking about is there�s a giant gender
gap. The Cook stuff was 19 points. That�s huge. And what I always look
at in my world is what�s happening with independent females,
independent suburban females, and how are they moving. And one of the
things I�d be a little concerned about for Kamala Harris, particularly
in the Blue Wall states, is she is starting to have a little bit of
erosion among those independents because of what�s going on with her
attacks on economics. So I think that she really needs to be in the
position now, if she wants to win, to go after those challenges that
Donald Trump has with his style and brand.

Let�s jump into that. Who in the hell are the persuadable voters at
this point?

John Anzalone: What we tend to see is that these persuadable,
undecided, swing voters � whatever you want to call them � tend to be
under 50, independent, disproportionately non-college-educated,
disproportionately female, disproportionately white. Although there�s a
universe of people of color as well.

Greg Strimple: I�d just add I think there�s two groups that we should
be talking about. And they�re both small, but in a razor-tight
election, they both matter. One is: Who�s voting for the third party
candidates? And since RFK came out and endorsed Trump and is trying to
take his name off the ballot, there�s still people voting for him. And
so that group of voters is important, because over half of them in the
last election voted for Donald Trump. And their big concern is these
personality issues. In the research we just did, they were more lower-
income, labor-oriented, Blue Wall state voters.

John�s 100 percent correct about what the demographics look like in
those swing voters. But they are conflicted because they really think
the economy�s terrible. They are really concerned about Kamala versus
Trump on the economy. But at the same time, they don�t like the
felonies. They don�t like the temperament. They don�t like all of those
things about Trump. And so they�re either going to decide this race on
economics or they�re going to decide it on, �Can we do four more years
of Trump and his kind of antics?�

John Anzalone: I think it�s a little more complicated than that. I
don�t think there�s two groups. I think there�s 50 groups, because I
think when you win an election at 45,000 votes in three states and then
75,000 votes in three states, and two of those states were different in
�16 versus �20, the fact is that this is going to be won on the
margins. And so there�s 10 or 15 or 20 demographic groups you want to
be careful about.

Listen to this episode of Playbook Deep Dive on Apple, Spotify, or
wherever you get your podcasts.

We talk about Trump and the issues that women voters have with him, but
Harris also has a big problem with young men, right? What does the data
you�re looking at say about this trend for her and for Democrats?

Greg Strimple: I think that obviously the biggest challenge she has is
with African American men under 50.

John Anzalone: Greg, I don�t know if you agree, but this dynamic
predates her. This movement with younger men predates her, just like
the share of African Americans going down. Look at Georgia, where you
had an African American U.S. Senate candidate on the Democratic and
Republican side and an African American Democratic gubernatorial
candidate who came very close in �18. And participation among African
Americans went down.

But that doesn�t mean that there�s not the opportunity to expand or
build on what Biden did in 2020 in Georgia. I�m very high on Georgia.
You know, 29 percent African American. Highest rate of growth with
Hispanic and Asian Americans. Just to give you a comparison, North
Carolina on a good day, 19 percent of the electorate will be African
American. Much fewer white, non-college educated voters in Georgia,
etc.

Greg Strimple: You talked about the gender gap, right? And it�s
growing. And so the most hardcore Trump group is white men 55-plus. The
second hardest is men underneath 55. And it�s really, I think, part of
the broader divergence between men and women in the country.

John Anzalone: The gender gap is fascinating across demographic groups.
Among Latino men in Arizona, a majority are voting for Trump.

What does that gender divide say about the country? Is this about the
candidates, the issues each party is talking about, or a trend that�s
been unfolding over time?

John Anzalone: I think there�s so many variables. I think with Latinos,
we�re seeing a dynamic not unlike my parents who my grandparents were
from Sicily, and they spoke Sicilian � and my parents, first
generation, they just wanted to be American. And so I think we tend to,
especially the media, look at Latinos as homogeneous. And I think we�ve
failed to realize that there�s first, second and third generation
Latinos who are American, and they act like Americans. And guess what?
A big universe of Americans are Republican.

Greg Strimple: One of the things I saw in the 2020 election � I was
doing work for Sen. Cornyn in Texas � Latinos started really moving for
Cornyn and Trump during all of the Black Lives Matter versus cops
debate. And then one of the big pieces that moved them again was when
Biden comes out and says we�re going to eliminate fossil fuels. And a
lot of these guys work in the oil industry. So there�s an economic and
also a social fabric piece that I think that you�re seeing Hispanics
diverge from the Democratic Party on.

This new Cook Political Report swing state survey that you worked on
shows Harris leading or tied with Trump in all but one of seven
battleground states. Biden and his team felt the Blue Wall was all they
had. That�s expanded since Harris, but there are some folks like Elissa
Slotkin, who�s running for Senate in Michigan, who are a little worried
about the Blue Wall for Harris.

Greg Strimple: I�m actually interested in asking John this question
because I just looked at his work that he did for AARP in Pennsylvania.
And my takeaway from John�s work was that it looks like Donald Trump
probably loses Pennsylvania, but there�s a chance that Republicans win
that Senate seat. I thought that was a more likely scenario than the
opposite. I think that this year, Michigan is, of those three states,
the most wanting to vote Republican. I think that one of the big
comebacks that she�s had since she�s become the nominee is putting that
state back in play for the Democrats. That�s a state with a large
Islamic population, Arab population that could really impact the race.
These voters are also more economically sensitive in these three
states. And that�s, again, why I think she�s at risk if Trump continues
on this economic message and moving her to the left and being part of
the problem on cost of living and inflation.

John Anzalone: I don�t disagree with any of that. Listen, I do [polling
for] Gretchen Whitmer. I grew up in Michigan, went to college in
Michigan, and my firm does [polling for] Elissa Slotkin. And the fact
is that of all the battleground states, over 50 percent � I think 52
percent � of the electorate is white, working class, non-college
educated. Clearly it�s a volatile situation with the Arab-American
population, which is the largest Arab-American population [in the
country] and centered around Dearborn.

I think that the one thing that Trump has done brilliantly,
unfortunately, is that he�s used the electric vehicle issue as a cudgel
to scare white working-class voters, especially in the auto industry.
If you lose Michigan, you can make it up in Georgia. And so you have to
think strategically about where you go if you happen to lose one of the
Blue Wall states that�s not Pennsylvania.

Should the Harris folks be worried about the Sun Belt? It is a place
where they�re spending a lot of time, money and effort obviously.

John Anzalone: Well, she�s spent a lot of time there. She�s been in
Atlanta. She�s been to Savannah. Some of these university polls that
you mentioned, I don�t particularly agree with, I think that Georgia is
close to dead even. I think that North Carolina is a couple of points
for Trump.

Greg Strimple: I don�t know what you�re defining as Sun Belt, but I
think one of the big states that has come back for Kamala that I
thought was going to be gone for Biden was Nevada. Kudos to the
Democrats in both Arizona and Nevada in the Senate races, because
they�ve gone out and they�ve really kind of destroyed the two
Republican candidates running for Senate there. I think it�s
interesting how big the deltas are between Kari Lake and Donald Trump.

John Anzalone: Jacky Rosen has exceeded expectations and kept that race
at a very comfortable lead above the margin of error pretty much all of
2024. When Biden was on the ticket, our AARP poll had Trump plus seven,
Rosen plus five. That�s a 12-point delta. Now of course, it�s different
now with Harris, and Harris is doing much better. But I do think one of
the storylines after the election is going to be a slight rebounding of
ticket splitters.

What does it tell you, not just that ticket splitters might be back,
but that voters are looking at these Senate and presidential candidates
differently in a world where we are so polarized?

John Anzalone: There�s so much money spent on defining U.S. Senate
candidates now that people are looking at them singularly, some
compared to the presidential campaign. I think 2022 kind of reset how
people look at this, because it was the first time you had so many
extreme Republicans, especially on abortion, when they were wanting to
ban it even in the case of rape, incest and life of the mother, we�d
kind of never seen that. And so there was some good differentiation
there.

Greg Strimple: I think that we might start seeing a lot of these
Republican races down ticket moving to the Republican side because
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.�

John Anzalone: I also think that in these Senate races, there tends to
be a bigger universe of persuadable voters than the presidential.
September is a Democratic month and October is the Republican month in
these U.S. Senate and congressionals. And that�s where things start to
tighten.

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/10/05/what-the-polls-are-
really-saying-00182588