It's night with Dan Ray. I'm telling you easy Boston's Radio.
All Right, we are two weeks away, two weeks away
from the from the election of twenty twenty four. The election has seemed to have been two years away, four years away, or ten years away, and now it's on our doorstep with us as Spencer Kimball a polster at Emerson College, and again I talk at the troiker posters, posters that I believe in, and Spencer is right there with Dave Paleologus and John Zogby and what what what's your What do you got at this point, Spencer that there's so many numbers here that would make your head spin.
How do you I'm not going to ask you who's going to win, because obviously if the election, election is not being held today, But what what's the trend? What do you see? What do your sense? What do you feel? Everybody I'm sure has a rooting interest of some sort. Your rooting interest is to be as accurate as possible.
Correct, You got it, Dan, and thanks again for having me as always. Well, it's an exciting time two weeks out from the election, particularly in this race that obviously got shaken up over the summer, when President Biden drops out and the vice president jumps in, we saw a lot of movement in those numbers going in the democrats favor. Now, it seems over the last four or five weeks they've been floating back into the Republican's favor, at least at
the presidential level. Some of the congressional races have swung in different ways, but at the presidential level, it seems generally across these states they started to trend back towards Trump after him losing ground when Harris initially jumped in.
Well, I'm looking at five point thirty eight, which is kind of a composite side of the different polls, and I look at this the favorable unfavorable. This is the combined polls favorable or unfavorable opinion of Donald Trump. So on January first this year, his unfavorable is fifty two point five percent. His favorable was four point two six percent, just about a nine point nine percent spread. The latest composite basically has his unfavorable a nine point two percent
spread in the wrong direction. So his unfavorable really hasn't moved much if we use January first, you know, as a as a starting point. I'm just picking a number that you know, he was ten point five unfavorable. Excuse me, a ten point five difference he was his unfavorable was fifty two point seven. His favorable was forty two point two. So again that's a ten point five difference. Now, as of I guess the nineteenth of October, which would have
been Saturday, his unfavorables nine point two. Not much of a swing there. And yet if you look at Kamala Harris, the same sort of set of circumstances, where can I find her?
Yeah?
I got her here. All of a sudden, she has had a precipitous drop. Her unfavorable was as high as sixteen point eight percent in late June, their unfavorable rating and her favorle rating was only thirty six. Now you get all the way to today her her unfavorable rating is forty seven point two and her favorable is forty
six point five, almost the same. So that on that it would look as if Harris should win because her favorable unfavorable is pretty closest, so kind of a forty seven to forty seven split, where Trump still has a ninety's nine points to the negative.
Well, there's a lot of unpacked there, Dan.
Yeah, absolutely, So go ahead.
We got to remember eight years ago, when Donald Trump's running, his favorability is at forty percent. So over the course of the last eight years, essentially his favorability number has gone up one point every year. And it's almost says if America has grown more accustomed to Trump and his number has gone up. So that's a bit of an issue for the Democrats this cycle, as compared to twenty sixteen, when you have that messaging where it's more negative on Trump.
Here he's got a more favorable rating than what we've seen anytime in his political career over these last eight years.
Okay, he's gone up a little bit. Okay, gotcha, I'm looking at that. You're absolutely right.
So now we got Harris. Harris was the vice president, and there's a lot of disparaging words that people have used over the years for the job of the vice president, starting back with John Adams. You know, even Adams you know, said it was, you know, not the best job in the world anyways. So as vice president, usually you're taking like the heat for anything that's not working out in
the administration. You're usually the attack person on the you know, with the media, and it hurts your popularity, and so you saw that with Harris. Then when Harris enters into the race becomes the nominee, it all changes literally overnight, and you see it in those numbers. Now what happens is it's a big shake up, and it's kind of like people looked at her for the first time as hey,
could this person be president? And some people are like, yeah, I like that, and you can see her favorability goes way up. She was in the low maybe thirty seven, thirty eight.
Exactly on July nineteenth, which I think might have been the weekend that Joe Biden basically said I'm out, her favorability rating was thirty seven point one percent.
So she springs up there, and it's very similar to what happened when she announced her candidacy for president five years ago. Her favorability springs up then as well, but then over the course of that campaign, which was about a couple of months, her favorabilities dropped and just never took off. So now we're in this election cycle and we've seen a very similar pattern occur, where yes, that favorability is up, but now, as you mentioned, she's a
little bit underwater. The unfavorables are a little bit higher than the favorables again right there with you know, within a point. And so that's a problem because it's supposed to be she's going to be a more favorable candidate than Trump. And when we look at these numbers, and again these are aggregate numbers, they're not the.
Emerson right right, right, right, Yeah. And also it looks it looks like that, it looks to me like the public would love to see two different candidates. Obviously that's not going to change.
No, they're more happy with these candidates than they were eight years ago, even though Trump is the same candidate. They're happier with you know, they have a more favorable opinion of Trump today than they did eight years ago, even four years ago. And that's a benefit right now for Trump in his brand.
So so how does you know, you say, okay, four years ago, this was before the indictments on.
This, I mean, you know, opinions change. You know, we like some things. You know, times change, and if you can stay in the public spotlight, what you know, this is a very unique candidacy and that it's potentially you know, it's been eight years, it could potentially be four more years, which is not something that we regularly see. And so he has grown accustom to a lot of American voters.
Uh.
And there's also the flip side, where you know, there's a lot of polarization where they dislike Trump. But that number has dropped a little bit from where it was, particularly eight years ago, but even four years ago, during the COVID response, that number was a little bit higher. Now it's now that number is down as well. And those are factors playing into this election.
Now, the national polls who would you vote for polls the average of all these candidates, of these two candidates, it's now a difference of a little less than two percentage points. Harris forty eight point two, Trump forty six point four. That means that there's still about five percent of the people who either have voted for a third party candidate or have not made up their mind. How important is it for Trump to keep it this close?
I mean, he's losing in the popular vote, but the theory is that he doesn't necessarily have to win the popular vote in order to win the electoral college. Right.
Based on Trump's game plans from the last two cycles, when he lost by two and a half points nationally, he was able to win those swing states by forty five thousand votes and win the presidency. When he lost by four and a half points nationally, then Biden was able to win those swing states by forty five fifty thousand votes go on to the presidency. And so, as you mentioned, some of the polls have it right at three three and a half. We have it a little
bit under two. But there's a little bit of a difference between this election cycle and others, and that Harris is really not campaigning in like forty states. She's not really going to California, she's not really going to New York. She's not camp because there isn't that normal election cycle where there's a nominating phase, there's the primaries. None of that happened, and so the voters don't know her as well as they would have known a previous candidate from
any election cycle because that campaigning didn't occur. And so her numbers are down in New York by like five points, not ten points. Five points, so instead of being up by twenty three, she's up by eighteen nineteen. California is the same.
Thing that doesn't help Trump in the sense that a loss is a loss. You lose New York by ten votes, you lose the electoral college votes. He's probably written those off anyway.
He's yeah, But I'm talking about the national vote, and that at three and a half percent, three percent, some of that is inflated in that in previous elections, like Clinton, she ran up her numbers in New York and California and she was able to win by you know, millions
of votes. I don't see Harris doing it that way, and so I do see her having a pathway even at two and a half to three percent, But I think it would be more difficult for her if Trump is able to take the lead nationally, for her to be able to win the electoral college.
So you think it's a tougher task for Harris to lose the popular vote and somehow get lucky and win with the electric call. Its an easier task for Trump because of the big votes in some big states like Illinois, New York, Massachusetts, and the biggest sop them all California, and you can throw in Oregon, in Washington and a few other states that are that are going to be
big Democratic victories no matter what. Sure, yeah, Maryland would be category where you know, yeah, hey, if you'll stick with me for one more segment, I'd love to just pick your brain a little bit here. I know we're not calling the winner here. And I'd also like to invite callers if they'd like to ask a question, a legitimate question. As I keep telling my listeners, listeners think that polsters are not on the level. Polsters are the most on the level people in America because they are
on the line. You can tell your friends you think that Trump's gonna win, or you think Harris is gonna win. No one's gonna know you were right or wrong except your friends. If if either Spencer or day Palliologus or John Zogby hit this precisely, that that makes their reputation. They want to be precise, They want to be exact. I mean, at least that's that's my fervent belief, and I think Spencer will back me up on it. We'll find out on the other side of the break if
you like to join the conversation. The state of the race, how do you view it? Six one, seven, two, five, four ten, thirty six one seven, nine, three one ten thirty. Let's have some fun.
Now back to Dan ray Line from the Window World Light Side Studios on w b Z News Radio.
My guest is Spencer Kimball, Emerson College pollster, one of the big significant polling organizations in the country. Let me run through a couple of states here with you, just for the fun of it, and I guess I'm looking at five thirty eight, which again is a composite judgment. So they're saying right now, Nevada very close, one point one percent for the Democrats, Pennsylvania point three percent, point three of one percent, and it was a third of
one percent for Trump. Michigan Democrats by point oh four percent, Wisconsin Democrat by by half of one percent, North Carolina Trump by one point one, Georgia Trump by one point six, Arizona Trump by one point nine. Those all sound pretty right to you as of this moment in time.
Uh yeah, yeah, I mean in the aggregate, those are the numbers that we're saying.
Okay, is there is there a state out there? Give me, give me two or three states that you think could surprise everyone knows. Massachusetts will be won by Kamala Harris. We can call that right now California and New York trumpel Trump will win Florida, assumed trumpel win Texas. There's any state out there that you're looking at and saying, hmm, something's going on here this state. I'm looking at it, and I'm thinking that it might actually be a surprise on election nights.
Well, obviously, we have the seven swing states, as you mentioned, you have your Florida and Texas. That is kind of off the board. We see those as you know, a plus five or greater for the Republicans. You got the three additional states of Minnesota, Virginia, in New Hampshire, but those states have generally been you know, five points plus
for the Democrats. Though Trump made New Hampshire really close in twenty sixteen, it bounced back towards the Dems in twenty twenty, and we haven't seen that that bounced back yet for Trump in twenty four But then you got like maybe a state like New Mexico we were looking at, but that one still seems to be pretty strong being a border state. You know, with Arizona. We saw how Arizona is a little bit different on their issues, but not in New Mexico. That one seems pretty solid for
the Dems. And so you know, you've got the first, the third, the second district of Nebraska. You got the second district up in Maine. But those two also seem at least the second district in Maine seem more locked in. If you watch the debates, it seems that that district is strong for the Republicans. We'll see if the Dems are able to hold that first, the second district of Nebraska. But unfortunately, I don't have, you know, like a magic state that I say, yeah, no problem.
If you said, hey, here's one to watch, it's a
long shot. But it's again. I guess the thing that I'm looking at here is I'm looking at Pennsylvania, and I'm thinking to myself, if Pennsylvania is the state that decides the election, and if Kamala Harris in retrospe do you think she is thinking that maybe the governor of Pennsylvania today might have been a better pick than the governor of Minnesota, both in terms of how they each would have played and which state is probably would have gone democratic anyway, if you know what I'm saying, I.
Do, Dan, and I think you raised two interesting points here. One is the logistics of a nineteen point electoral vote state in Pennsylvania, that Governor Shapiro is very popular and he wins that race. Now he runs against a weaker Republican candidate and wins by fifteen points, but he still wins by fifteen points. He's still very popular in the state, and to your point, he may have been a pretty
strong asset on the ticket. But then I think the other part is not just the logistics of the state and the nineteen electoral votes, but that vice presidential debate seemed to be a momentum stopper and shifter in this race.
And it wasn't a major change, but Harris had performed well in that first presidential debate or in the only presidential debate, and even though the polls were still floating a little bit towards Trump, what we've seen in the last two to three weeks since the vice presidential debate was Trump picking up a little bit more ground than that, suggesting that perhaps Shapiro's would have been a different type of debater against Vance, and maybe would have presented it
a little bit differently than the way Walls came out a little bit more folksy. Remember you know, we're talking about an attorney general versus a governor. Well, Shapiro's a governor now too, but at the time, so it's interesting
to think about those scenarios. But of course, you know, at the start walls a lot of positive media, there was a lot of energy there, and so it's hard to say how that would have come out if Shapiro's the nominee, does the progressive wing of the Democratic Party crater at that moment and say we're out and that would have been a problem for Harris as well. So hard to tell how that would have played. But obviously we'll find out in a couple of weeks.
I would think, So how about this. We're ten thirty. I got to take a newscast. I got some callers. You want to talk to the callers? Sure, of course, Okay, I know you'd be I never would take an assumption, make an assumption. So El and Dave, I got you coming up, and if you want to jump on board and talk with Spencer Kimball sixty six seven, nine thirty. The State of the Race the twenty twenty four presidential race.
Two weeks from right now, two weeks from right now, conceivably I'm not saying we will, but it's conceivable that if two weeks from right now, Pennsylvania has gone a little more strongly than maybe and is called for Harris or Trump, that could be the key that unlocks the electoral College. So it's not inconceivable that the race could
be over. I don't think it will be at this point in the evening because I think that there will be too long to go and it may end up with Nevada and Arizona being the case the states that decide. But either way, we are now within two weeks. Uh within we are within two weeks less, two and a half hours of the polls in Massachusetts, up a down the East Coast, clothing that's all where this it's two weeks bo Just think of it like that, two weeks
is not a long time. Back on Night Side right after this with Spencer Kimball, Polar Extraordinary from Emerson College.
Night Side with Dan Ray on Boston's News.
My guest is Spencer Kimball. Spencer, I'm looking at some recent polls here. Your most recent poll was October fourteenth to the eighteenth. You had it Harris by one. So have you been are you back in the field now or when are you back in the field nationally? That was a USA Today poll.
Yeah, So our national polls we go in right now each week, and so we went back in the field tonight. We'll have results back on Friday, and we'll track the race this week and next week going into the election.
You got some polls coming up tomorrow on state races.
We do, we do. We've been taking a look, as we previously mentioned, Florida and Texas. Those are two races that folks have been talking about. So we took a look down in Florida. Last time we were there. Rick Scott, the Senator, had a small lead. It looks like he's extended that lead now to about four or five points. Trump likewise had a four or five point lead. Remember
that's a state he wins by about three points. We have him up about seven or eight when you take a look at where Remember DeSantis wins this state by nineteen in the midterms, So Florida will be interesting to watch. So those two are coming out, and then we've got South Dakota. I don't know if we've got much There a lot of ballot initiatives out there. Trump is doing about what he did before. And then we'll get into some battleground states. Oh, we got Maryland coming. That's the
Larry Hogan race versus alsl Brooks. Hogan was competitive there last time. We polled in the eight point range, but now it looks like it's jumped to double digits. Remember that's a state Massachusetts very much.
It's almost a mirror mirror reflection. I don't think there's one member of the Congression of Delegation down there who's anything. They're all Democrats, if I'm not mistaken. What about Texas, that's a closer race than people would have expected.
Well, Texas was a state where Trump wins by I think it was like eight or nine and twenty sixteen, and then it drops down to about five and a half in twenty twenty. We have it bouncing back up for Trump. But the Senate race is very competitive with Cruise and Colin Alrid. You know, it's a race where people don't necessarily know the Democrat, but they're voting against Cruise, and so that's a difficult place for the incumbent to be in. That one's still very close and we'll be
exciting to watch. But the Senate overall is most likely going to go towards the Republicans based on West Virginia. And then later this week we'll have a Montana pole with John Tester and Chiehi the Republican.
You watch, you'll hot you got to watch Ohio too, as I understand it.
Oh yeah, Bernie Moreno, the Trump endorsed candidate. He came out of kind of nowhere to get that nomination based on Trump's endorsement. And now shared Brown was a very popular Democrat. You know, we've had him up. But here's
how polling works. When you're the incumbent, you got to get over at fifty percent, and so when you're sticking at forty seven eight percent, and that's where Ted cruises as well, that's that's a sign of concern because that means voters are still looking around and potentially going to vote for your opponent.
Well, let's get um, let's get a couple of callers in here, going to go to L in Saugas. L hope you have a good question for Spencer Kimball or an observation.
Go ahead, L all right, Just like there's a thing called tax avoidance, and then this tax evasion, you have election influencers, and then you cross the line into election interference. And I believe the pollsters are guilty of election interference because the undecideds are the biggest factor. They're the ones who will move left and right. Like you just said, you don't know where they're going to go, and you guys push them to say, I want to pick the winner.
I'm going to Oh, the posters say this one's win, so I want to say I picked the right one, and there's nothing to a policy. It becomes like a gambling horse race or people are an ego trip. So the only people that should have this information of the inner circle candidates so they can decide how much to how much energy to exert our money in different places.
Otherwise, Okay, so you know what, I just want to make sure I understay what you're saying. Now, what I think you're saying is that the pollsters should take polls for candidates but not release the results to the public.
Yeah, maybe in the history after the fact, because all you're doing is there's.
A problem with that. You want to be right, Well, here's the problem that good, it's Spencer's going to react to. But here's the problem from my perspective. If Spencer Campbell does a poll for candidate X, whether it's anal poll or it's a poll in a state, and then he tells candidate x's campaign here's what the numbers are. How long do you think those numbers are going to stay quiet?
Right? But the point of it is it shouldn't be pushed to the undecided voters because you're influencing them.
Okay, Spencer, your witness, go ahead. Well, Al from sagas Al.
I appreciate the call and the concern, and it's been something that's happened in polling industry really since its inception. There was congressional hearings back in the nineteen forties saying that pollsters were actually suppressing the vote by just doing polls. It turned out the data was in the other end that turnout was actually higher. Not to say that the polls increased turnout, but it's certainly the conclusion that they decreased or suppressed turnout really didn't play out in those
data sets. However, when you look at these undecided voters, you know, we put it out there that still four or five percent and that the race is open. So to me, it's not really locking somebody in saying, oh, this one's gonna win. Jump on the bandwagon, because if you had that, then Hillary Clinton really would have won in twenty sixteen because ninety something percent of the polls were skewed in her direction. So if you were a nondecided voter, you'd say, well, if I want to jump
on the winner, Clinton's going to be the winner. Even the expectation question was like sixty percent or hire of voters dot Clinton was going to win that election. So there's the bandwagon effect and people jumping on. But it didn't happen, And so I think it and I hear your point. Polling really is an opportunity to understand your audience. It's audience analysis and persuasion. So when we hear candidates talking about certain issues or topics, it's generally pole driven.
I can tell you what the most important issues are, and then you can't hear the candidates talk about them. And then we test out their different policies, you're like, oh, that's really popular, Like you know, the no tax on tips, that's a really you know, seventy something percent popularity across
all political ideologies. You can see why both Trump and then Harris jumped on that policy because it was popular in the polling kind of let the public see and and why that policy would be, you know, something that they would advocate for. And so there's a lot of different uses of surveys and polls. Remember we're a twenty billion dollar industry. So but this one area for pre election polling is an area that we study. We look
at what to do with undecided voters. In fact, I've done multiple studies that I just study these people and I say, well, what's the best way to study them, how to ask these questions and how to learn from from the from these surveys, and so that's what that's what we use them for. I can hear the concerns though,
Al We're not looking to influence public opinion. We're looking to represent and be able to meror it back to folks so they know, you know, because we all think, oh, this is how I think about this, and then you see the survey back and oh, I guess I'm in the minority on that issue.
I think the people that are trying to influence public opinion are the spin misters from the different candidate. They'll look at a poll and they'll say, oh, yeah, you know we're down one percent, but or I know we're up one percent, but it's even going to be bigger than that. There's where I think the influence comes into play. A good question. I hope you appreciated the answer. I'm not sure it's going to give insu but it's an honest.
Yeah, it was very good. The undecided, though, please try to explain them. How can you not decide by now? I know people are voting now too. They just said on the news, fourteen percent of matter choose that's already voted. I guess so they just said.
Well, but maybe I've decided. Turned out to be the people who choose not to vote.
Ah, very good, Dan.
Well, you know, if you if you're really undecided, and there could be some people who decide, I want to go vote in the Senate race because whatever reason, but I can't make up my mind, and you know, they blank. I don't know if they've done a study on how many people blanked Hillary and Trump in twenty sixteen, how many blanked Trump and Biden in twenty twenty. Is there a study done on that.
They usually blank down the ballot, so you're voting for person and then you blank. Now, the issue in twenty sixteen were the third party candidates, and it's still an issue here in twenty twenty. We're not seeing it here in Massachusetts because we're not a competitive state. But if you're down in Georgia, there's a Jill Stein billboard up in town, and we know Jill Stein from Massachusetts. She's down there campaigning and the Democrats are very concerned that
she's going to pull votes from Harris. Now there's also a libertarian, Chase Oliver. He's from Georgia and he's down there, and the Republicans aren't concerned that he's going to pull votes from So there's a lot of moving parts in these elections. It's not as easy as just saying, you know, they'll not vote, or they'll they'll vote on one issue or another. But it is interesting to see how people decide where to place those votes.
One thing that you said, one one thing, Yeah, sure, hold on, just one thing. I want to I just want to add elephants, Okay, because I'll lose the thought. One thing that you said, Spencer, which was interesting. I did not realize that Trump's vote in Texas dropped off on a percentage basis from twenty sixteen to twenty twenty. That's the first time I've heard that. I'm sure it's true.
Did anyone someone must have done a study and said, okay, to prove that the results of the election were with what people most people accepted that Biden won the race. Did anyone you know, point out in a public forum that, hey, Trump's percentage of victory even in states that he won, was less in twenty twenty than twenty sixteen.
That I don't know. But in twenty twenty, you got to remember, there were more votes prior to election day because of early voting, than all of the votes of twenty sixteen. So we had this huge turnout. And as we come into twenty twenty four, I'm going to bet on a lower turnout than in twenty twenty. So I don't think we're going to have one hundred and sixty million votes one hundred and fifty five million votes. So who are the people who aren't going to come out?
And as you mentioned, those might be the undecided voters five percent, but it could be a more substantial number. And that's where the pollsters we run into some problems when we're trying to project turnout numbers and those numbers don't hit the mark sometimes.
Okay, ell, if you can make it quick or I can hold you over past.
It real quick. When you've got to do trying to figure out New Hampshire, you better pull Massachusetts because the same day registration in Hampshire and they bust people up there.
Well, I don't believe that, but you could say that. I don't think they. I really don't. I've never seen any evidence of that. Do they maybe bust people up to staff polling places, but I think I've never seen any You heard some stuff, but you heard this is what the problem is. I mean, the problem is you heard some stuff and you say it on my show. I've never seen any proof of that whatsoever.
Kind of like same day registration either, Well, that's fine, just like I don't think college students should vote.
I think college students should. We have to vote in the communities where they live, not in schools that they happen because they can influence, particularly in the state. But that's reasonable. But the idea of their buses of people coming up across the borders from Massachusetts, Massachusetts residents who have done their duty to voted. The implication of what you're saying is people vote at eight o'clock in the morning, get on buses and go up and vote in New Hampshire.
That's just there's no proof of that. Gotta run, but I gotta run. Thank you all. I have a great one. Hissbray coming right back with Spencer Kimball.
Now back to Dan Ray live from the Window World night Side Studios on WBZ News Radio.
Okay, I'm gonna keep Spencer with me until eleven, and those of you who are not gonna get on this hour, you stay right there and I get you right on the other side of the break. Let me go to Dave and Danvers. Dave, you've been winning the longest Go right ahead.
Uh, it's talking to me Dan.
Are you Dave from Danvers?
Day from Davers?
Is that you Dave from Danvers? We're wasting time.
Dave, Oh, on the phone, hanging on?
Okay, why don't you hang on a little longer? Okay, put him on hold? Do you want to waste my time? We're gonna move on to Donna in Berkeley. Donna next on Nightsider, right ahead.
I can I'm so sorry, and it's the beginning of the program because I'm on my way.
To work, but I have problem this to say hi to Spencer Kimball. He's the Emerson College poster.
Hi Spencer Spence. Then my question is when you're doing these pollings and I hear these pollings every day, my question is they didn't ask me. And so then Dan had a good point was maybe these undecided may not even vote. So how does one do these pollings when I haven't been asked or my husband hasn't been asked?
Go ahead, Yeah, well that's.
A great question.
So we've got, you know, roughly two hundred and fifty four million adults in the country that we get to reach out to, and you're not getting many surveys here in Massachusetts because we don't have money competitive races, though. We are doing a Massachusetts poll this week, and what we do is we send out about thirty thousand text messages to a random list of people from the state, and if you get a text message from Emerson College Polling,
we ask you to take the survey. We'll also send out some emails and we'll call you on your landline if you have a landline. And so we use random sampling sampling of people and from all of those text messages and phone calls, we'll get about a thousand people to complete the survey and then we'll do the study. Now, your question about those undecided voters, and we had al from the previous segment ask about them. You know, there's
different ways of handling. We've had researchers in the past who suggest you just take them out of the survey and you reweight the results based on no undecided voters. Other folks think that you should push those undecided voters and you ask them a follow up question saying if you had to make a decision, which way would you lean.
And so those are two of the more popular ways of dealing with the undecided voters, and we actually do both because we're here to study and learn what is the best methods available out there, and then after the elections we go back and we say, oh, this worked better than that, and then we can add to the knowledge in the field of survey research.
Very good. So my second question, if you don't mind with all your polling and then you go back to re examine it after the election, how correct were you in your polling?
We were pretty good. I mean our national poll in twenty twenty is probably the best in the country. We were at I think four point two, and I think Biden wins by four point four. We got tripped up in a few of the states where we weren't perfect, and so those are areas that we look to improve upon. Same thing. In the midterm elections, we were pretty solid.
Remember we're doing twenty four to twenty five different states, upwards of fifty three fifty five races, and what we're looking to do is have the survey just fall within that margin of error. I know that the public wants you to have the winner, and trust me, I would love predictive accuracy, but that's not how surveys work. There are a range of scores, and so if I tell you that the race is going to be two points and the other side wins by two the survey actually
does its job. It's a range. It's not going to be as precise as we would like it to be. But if I tell you that somebody is gonna win by ten points and they lose, then that survey did not do the job because it fell with outside that range.
And so as we take a look at some of these races like Florida and Texas, those are falling now outside the margin of error, suggesting that those are not going to be all that competitive, though these swing states still seem that they could go in either direction.
All we got we got to stop it. The good questions, Donnie, get them all in. Thank thank you much, thank you, all right, right back at you. Spencer is always really enjoyed it. Uh. I'm going to just go to open lines on this issue on the other side of the eleven. But thanks my friend, and we'd love to have you back at least one more time as we get a little closer to that two week mark of November fifth, which is now just two weeks away. Thank you so much, Spencer.
As always, Thanks Dan, I have a great night, all.
Right, hang in there. He's the best, one of the best, folks. I'm telling you. We only bring you the best here on night side, and we will continue with your calls. Uh. We got a couple of open lines six one, seven, two, five, four ten thirty or six one seven, nine three one ten thirty. Dial it up. Are you concerned that your person, your man or woman in this race is dropping or not going to make it, or are you dead solid,
perfect that you got a winner. We'll discuss right after the eleven o'clock News