Was there a bounce?

Polls may be missing rural whites again, Electoral College bias returns, Trump playing catch-up on air, massive Gen Z gender gap, polling error over time, an Iowa-Missouri paradox

Patrick Ruffini

Aug 30, 2024

No. 328 | August 30th, 2024

🇺🇲 2024

Harris has dropped below 50% in the Silver Bulletin forecast (thanks to their convention bounce adjustment) and is a slight underdog on Polymarket, but she made further gains in the polls last week following the Democratic National Convention, with an average Harris lead of 2.9 points and an 0.5 gain week-over-week.

Silver Bulletin: Harris +3.8 (H+1.3)
538: Harris +3.5 (H-0.1)
NYT Upshot: Harris +3 (H+1)
The Hill/DDHQ: Harris +3.8 (H+0.6)
RCP: Harris +1.8 (H+0.3)
Cook Political: Harris +1.2 (H+0.2)
VoteHub: Harris +2.6 (H+0.3)
RacetotheWH: Harris +3.6 (H+0.4)

Average of the Averages: Harris +2.9 (H+0.5)

The convention bounce for both parties this year has been pretty minimal and in steady decline from its heyday in the 1980s and ‘90s.

Coldspark’s Mark Harris finds evidence of rural white working class voters not responding to surveys, and their quotas being filled in by their more Democratic counterparts in cities and suburbs. Needless to say, this could have a significant impact in a state like Pennsylvania:

For example, in a recent internal statewide survey in a large state, people with a graduate degree were five and half times more likely to answer the survey than those without a degree, while people with a bachelor’s degree were three times more likely.
This doesn’t take into account a fascinating response bias developing around population density. Pollsters often divide geography into urban, suburban, and rural segments by population density. In recent surveys, there has been a pronounced drop-off in rural, white, working-class responses, with some of the quotas being filled in by suburban and urban white working-class voters who are much more likely to be Democratic in orientation.

Electoral College bias is rearing its head again.

Following Super Tuesday, Democrats have outspent Republicans in seven battleground states, but Republicans are keeping pace in the most important of them — the Keystone State.

With that said, the Weslayan Media Project finds Trump’s team catching up, with more ad airings in recent days attacking Harris.

The Gen Z Gender Gap is huge.

Is the gender gap a function of men moving right or women moving left? This will forever be one of the mysteries of the universe. The Upshot also takes a look at young women who would not have voted for Biden but are newly excited to vote for Harris.

“Vice President Harris’s candidacy has reinvigorated many Democrats and independents — and

particularly young women. Their newfound enthusiasm is evident in interviews, and in early signals

from polls in swing states and nationwide.”

“In Times/Siena polls this month of voters in six swing states, young women were, on average, 10

percentage points more likely to support Ms. Harris than they had been to support Mr. Biden in May.”

Partisans disagree widely on the role of government, with one exception: maintaining Social Security and Medicare benefits at current levels.

📊 Polling

Pew Research summarizes the state of play in public polling. How polls are conducted has changed dramatically in recent elections, with more online opt-in surveys.

Here’s a handy chart of polling error in presidential elections over time. I’ve previously said that polling error is random, benefiting both sides about equally, but here it looks like polls have overestimated Democrats in two thirds of postwar elections.

Republicans are much more likely to describe themselves as working class — regardless of income or education.

🖥 Digital Data

Digital data is more and more a black box, as platforms pull pull back on public access to data.

TikTok used to display audience data next to certain hashtags in its videos. But it pulled down that feature after the beginning of the Hamas-Israel war when it argued journalists were misinterpreting the data.
X, Reddit and other social networks have begun limiting backend access to their data to prevent AI firms from scraping it. That's also made it harder for researchers and journalists to analyze content trends.
More news engagement has moved to private groups and encrypted chats that are difficult for third parties to measure amid privacy concerns. (Gen-Z is particularly sensitive to posting public information about their personal lives.)