With just a few days left in the 2024 campaign, polling expert Frank Luntz suggested we’ve reached the limit on how much polls can actually tell us about who will win the presidential election.
Opinion polls are so close that it’s impossible to figure out the mindset of voters, he told CNN. Meanwhile, any voters who are still undecided at this late stage are unlikely to vote for either Donald Trump or Kamala Harris.
“I’m not looking as much at the polling anymore because that’s determined,” Luntz added. “I don’t believe there are anymore undecideds. There’s still non-committeds. There are still persuadables. But if you’re undecided, you reject both candidates. You don’t like them. You’re not gonna be voting for them.”
Rather than continuing to dissect fresh polling data, he is trying to figure out what turnout will be and is watching how many young women in particular will show up, he explained.
If that demographic makes up a bigger share of the overall electorate, then that’s great news for Harris and it may “propel her,” Luntz said.
That’s as the vice president has made abortion rights and women’s health a cornerstone of her campaign messaging.
The other voters that he is watching closely are Latinos, who are voting in good numbers in the swing states of Arizona and Nevada, where they could be decisive.
Early voting data shows that Pennsylvania has seen a surge in Democratic women who didn’t vote in 2020 but are casting ballots in this cycle. But in Arizona, Republican men are leading the new voters heading to the polls early.
An X factor is Trump’s rally last month at Madison Square Garden, which could have turned the race around in Harris’s favor. During the event, comedian Tony Hinchcliffe called Puerto Rico “a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean,” sparking a backlash among Latinos.
Adding to limits on polling’s ability to forecast the election is the track record from 2016 and 2020, when most polls undercounted Trump supporters.
One explanation was that pro-Trump voters were reluctant to tell pollsters how they were voting. But Luntz doesn’t think that’s a factor in 2024.
“I don’t believe in this so-called shy Trump voter this time,” he said. “Trump people are not afraid to voice their point of view. And all the focus groups I’ve been doing up to right now, Trump people are very loud, very vocal, very willing to acknowledge who they voted for or will vote for, and very willing to participate.”
After pollsters underestimated Trump in the previous elections, a key question is whether they are now overcompensating and going too far to account for hidden Trump voters, “and that distorts the data,” Luntz added.
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