Ask most party strategists, US pollsters or pundits and they’ll tell you the 2024 presidential election could be the closest in decades, if not a century.
Given Joe Biden’s 2020 win was decided by fewer than 45,000 votes in just three battleground states, that’s quite the claim.
However, it is what the polls suggest. The contest between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump is super tight, both nationally and in the key states.
So, how much can we trust the polls?
It’s a question many are raising after they famously got it so wrong four years ago.
The American Association for Public Opinion Research called it the biggest polling miss in 40 years, showing Mr Biden’s lead over Mr Trump in the final two weeks of the campaign twice as large as it was when the votes were counted.
In 2012, pollsters significantly underestimated Barack Obama’s lead over Mitt Romney. But, while Mr Trump’s 2016 victory over Hillary Clinton shocked many people, the error on the national polls was relatively small by comparison.
Of course, all polls come with uncertainty, some inbuilt error, and they are only a snapshot of the current situation, not a prediction of the outcome on polling day.
Crucially, though, there is evidence they also become a more reliable predictor of the outcome the closer we get to the election. It may seem obvious, but a year out from voting the polls are on average seven points different from the final tally for each candidate. By the last week of the…
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