Another reason to anticipate a Trump victory: when the President wins again, we’ll never have to pay any more attention to the pollsters:
Should Trump once again dispatch his Democratic challenger, the polling industry is finished, Republican pollster Frank Luntz told Fox News on Thursday.
“Well, I hate to acknowledge it, because that’s my industry,” he told Fox anchor Bret Baier. “But the public will have no faith. No confidence. If Donald Trump surprises people… my profession is done.”
Luntz insists that his polling is accurate this time, and that Biden will win. However, undecided voters may be leaning toward Trump. As the two men faced off in the final presidential debate in Tennessee on Thursday night, Luntz organized a focus group of undecided voters. After the showdown, a majority of these voters were leaning toward backing Trump. They described him as “controlled,” “poised,” and “surprisingly presidential,” while Biden was thought of as “vague,” “elusive,” and “defensive.”
If a Biden-friendly pollster, backed by his latest focus group, is publicly opening the door to a potential Trump victory, the election gurus may not be as confident in their figures as they let on.
FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver is another one of these gurus, and his predictions are taken seriously in Washington. Right now, Silver gives Biden an 87 percent chance of winning. Yet the nation’s premier pollster has also been hedging his bets. On the same day that he bumped Biden’s chances up to 87 percent, Silver took to Twitter to remind his followers that “Trump still does have a nontrivial chance.”
“There’s still some time left,” he continued. “Tipping-point state polls are closer than national polls, sometimes polls are wrong… and mail voting and court disputes create some additional uncertainties.”
The Economist’s G. Elliot Morris is similarly all-in on Biden, giving the Democrat a 92 percent chance of winning on November 3. Morris is confident in his prediction, overly so according to Silver. Yet even though Morris has declared the race “very probably” over for Trump, he couldn’t help but write an article explaining exactly how he may be wrong.
I expect both Luntz and Morris know perfectly well what is going to happen on November 3. Silver is the only one who is dumb enough to insist that his model is right and it is reality that has it wrong. Watch as the polls “unexpectedly” begin to “tighten” between now and then.