Dead-heat poll results are astonishing and improbable, these experts say | US elections 2024 | The Guardian
This near-monolithic picture, emerging from multiple polls, has triggered suspicions among some analysts of herding around state poll averages by pollsters cautious of being proved wrong for the third time running after significantly underestimating Trump s support in 2016 and 2020.
Writing on NBC s website, Josh Clinton, a politics professor at Vanderbilt University, and John Lapinski, the network s director of elections, pondered whether the tied race reflected not the sentiments of the voters, but rather risk-averse decision-making by pollsters. Some, they suggested, may be wary of findings indicating unusually large leads for one candidate and introduce corrective weighting.
People forget that you’re unlikely to pull out exactly one half black and one half white from a giant urn of balls.