Introducing 538's new 2024 presidential polling averages for Kamala Harris versus Donald Trump.

As of Friday at 10 a.m. Eastern, our average of national polls says Harris has the support of 45.0 percent of voters, while Trump garners 43.5 percent.

That 1.5-percentage-point lead is within our average’s uncertainty interval, which you can think of as a sort of margin of error for our polling averages.

It’s a little weird that they say Harris is “tied” with trump, even though she’s ahead by 1.5%. That seems like a big deal. Margin of error is important, but it’s just factually true that Vice President Harris is up by an average of 1.5%.

I looked back at how 538 treated polls when trump was up by a similar amount:

https://abcnews.go.com/538/polls-after-presidential-debate/story?id=111610497

In 538’s national polling average, Trump now leads by 1.4 percentage points over Biden, while the two candidates were just about tied on June 27, the day of the debate.

So Harris up by 1.5% is actually “tied”, but trump up on Biden by 1.4% is “leads” (and explicitly different from “tied”!). No mention of margin of error in that paragraph.

🤔🤔🤔

    • Twinklebreeze @lemmy.world
      5·
      2 months ago

      I wouldn’t say they are pure trash, but they have also lost all of the talent that made them great. Nate, Claire, The Whiz Kid Harry Enton. I stopped listening to the podcast when Claire left. I stopped reading the site when Nate left and took his model with him.

    • BreadstickNinja@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      2 months ago

      All the people who founded it left. Nate Silver, who originally built the company, doesn’t trust the new leadership, their model, or their treatment of polls.

      They’re credible for simply reporting poll results but the election model seems to have some issues.

    • steve_floof@lemm.ee
      2·
      2 months ago

      They get enhanced coverage every election year, get everything wrong, then brought in again 4 years later as experts.

      Reminds me of the show Lost, where Sayid would plan a military style operation for the group. They’d all get captured because he was wrong, then have him plan the next military operation with immediate amnesia of how poorly he does at such things