New York Times Pollster Warns That Shy Trump Voters Could Be Skewing Surveys â Again
The silent red tsunami could be on the horizon…
According to The New York Timesâ chief political analyst and pollster Nate Cohn silent Trump supporters could skew poll results once again, leaving prognosticators scratching their skulls in the finals hours before Election Day.
The Times reported in Arizona, Donald Trump leads Kamala Harris by four points, and in Michigan, he has a one-point advantage. Harris, on the other hand, is beating Trump by one in Georgia, and three in Nevada, North Carolina, and Wisconsin.
On Sunday, the Times and Siena College released their final poll from the seven battleground states, and the results were inconclusive.
In his write-up of the results, Cohn submitted that they donât âpoint toward a relatively clear favoriteâ for a few reasons, even if Harris was perhaps slightly more pleased by its finding.
âOn average, Ms. Harris fared modestly better than our last round of surveys of the same states, but her gains were concentrated in states where she was previously struggling,â he wrote. âMeanwhile, the so-called Blue Wall (Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania) does not look quite as formidable of an obstacle to Mr. Trump as it once did. As a result, Ms Harrisâs position in the Electoral College isnât necessarily improved.â
Cohn also warned that nonresponse bias from Republicans may be continuing to skew the results, just as they did in 2016 and 2020:
Itâs hard to measure nonresponse bias â after all, we couldnât reach these demographically similar voters â but one measure I track from time to time is the proportion of Democrats or Republicans who respond to a survey, after considering other factors.
Across these final polls, white Democrats were 16 percent likelier to respond than white Republicans. Thatâs a larger disparity than our earlier polls this year, and itâs not much better than our final polls in 2020 â even with the pandemic over.
âIt raises the possibility that the polls could underestimate Mr. Trump yet again,â he concluded.




















