I’m going to make the lede to this story about the latest VCU poll of Virginia voters on the presidential election, this time measuring Kamala Harris vs. Donald Trump, about the methodology.
Not because of the numbers – the poll has Harris ahead of Trump by a 10-point margin, 46 percent to 36 percent, which still seems off, because it suggests that 18 percent still haven’t made up their minds.
Just, because.
I wanted to point out that in the fine print, we learn that the poll was conducted by calling people – 203 by landline, 610 by cell phone.
Who has a landline anymore in this day and age, is the first question, and the second: who in their right mind answers a number from outside their contact list and then just talks for minutes on end to the person on the other end of the line?
If you want to know why polls aren’t all that accurate anymore, there’s why: they’re measurements of the predominantly older folks who still have landlines, and the rest who are among the most gullible among us.
OK, to the poll numbers
I should have apologized at the outset to the people at the L. Douglas Wilder School of Government and Public Affairs at VCU, who I assume are good people.
The most recent Wilder School poll of Virginia voters, done back in July, when Joe Biden was still in the race, had Trump leading Biden, 39 percent to 36 percent.
At first glance, the crosstabs seem a little off, because the numbers tell us that both Harris and Trump get just over 80 percent of their own party’s voters, and then Trump has an eight-point lead among independents, but then I noticed that the pollster, the Harrisonburg-based Responsive Management, asked a follow-up question to try to pin down self-identified independents on who they felt they aligned with more, and that narrowed things down there considerably – to 13.8 percent of those surveyed.
Drilling down, the poll gives Harris a 38 percent-to-37 percent lead on Trump on who is better to handle the economy, a 50.2 percent-to-31.8 percent lead among women, and a slight edge – 40.9 percent-to-40.5 percent – among men.
It’s worth noting that the poll was conducted between Aug. 26 to Sept. 6, so, before last night’s televised presidential debate.
The Wilder School noted in the press release announcing the poll numbers that it is currently conducting another poll, post-debate, to compare voting intentions.
How does this poll sit with other recent Virginia numbers?
The VCU poll data fits in with recent trends in Virginia. The most recent Washington Post poll (conducted Sept. 4-8) has Harris ahead by a 51 percent-43 percent margin, and a Morning Consult poll (conducted Aug. 30-Sept. 8) has Harris ahead 52 percent to 42 percent.
It would seem like the best advice to the Trump side would be to pull whatever resources it has in Virginia to go to an actual battleground state, because Virginia isn’t going to be in play this fall.
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Chris Graham
