The Swiss political scientist, who has studied the unique dynamics that cause incumbents to win or lose, told RedState that the shift in poll numbers in favor of Vice President Kamala Harris in the presidential race and away from former President Donald Trump is highly suspect.
“It would not surprise me if some voters were now lying to the pollsters,” said Dr. Louis Perronwho received his doctorate from the University of Zurich.
Perron, the author of Beat the Incumbent: Proven Strategies and Tactics to Win Elections, said it was natural for voters to present themselves as socially or morally acceptable.
“There’s a lot of mainstream media hype around Kamala right now, so some voters may not want to admit they’re not going to vote for her,” he said. “In recent polls, she’s received more than 40 percent among white voters. I’m not saying that’s impossible, but I’ll believe it when I see it in November.”
This is one of the reasons why polls in both the UK and the US do not capture true support for conservative candidates, said the political scientist, who earned his bachelor’s degree from the University of Geneva.
“There’s a common pattern here with the shy Tory voter or the shy Trump voter,” he said. “There’s a difference between public opinion – what people think – and published opinion – what’s published in the media. Some people are hesitant to speak out against published opinion.”
The Real Clear Politics General Elections Presidential Poll is a basket of polls that acts as a moving average. As modern polls are added to the basket, the elderly polls are dropped. This method smooths out spikes and, although lagging, provides a self-confirming picture of the race.
From September 13, when Trump gained a 45 percent to 44 percent lead over President Joe Biden, the former president held that lead until August 5, when Harris gained a 48 percent to 47 percent lead.
By July 21, when Biden’s advisers announced he was withdrawing his re-election effort, Trump’s lead had grown to 48 percent, while Biden’s lead was 45 percent.
It should be remembered that national polls naturally tend to favor the Democrats, since there is no election campaign in California and New York, where about 15 percent of the country’s population lives, and the Democrats were able to gain surplus votes there that do not change the electoral college.
In one of his YouTube presentations, “Race in the Race,” on August 17, Perron went into more detail about why pollsters would mislead pollsters:
When Barack Obama ran for US president about 16 years ago, he railed against his staff and accused them of pretending that he was not black. “Of course that’s a problem,” he is reported to have said.
Now it’s 2024, and the first African-American woman is running for president in the United States. And of course that’s an issue too. I remember the notable line from a Republican pollster at the Trafalgar Group: “People lie to their spouses, they lie to their accountants and their doctors. Why on earth would they honestly tell a stranger on the phone who they’re going to vote for?”
In the US, poll results have been significantly off the mark for several election cycles in a row, and that has a lot to do with the fact that Trump’s appeal was underestimated.
Perron said in the post that the mood among pollsters was more open to expressing their support for Trump than his opponent, Biden.
“I have long suspected this election year that Trump did so well in the polls because the focus was on Joe Biden as the incumbent and, secondly, because pollsters finally adjusted and stopped underestimating him,” he said.
Perron’s central thesis is that the incumbent must convince his electoral base as quickly as possible after taking office and then present the ideas and policies of the opposition as his own.
On the other hand, the incumbent challenger must create a binary choice that contains as little substance as policy measures, allowing voters to project their own agenda onto the challenger.
“We are no longer in a typical challenger-versus-incumbent race,” he said.
“Harris represents a different generation than Trump and Biden, but she was obviously part of the Biden-Harris administration and carried the weight,” he said.
“Both Trump and Harris are entitled to insider and outsider status.”
