Polling expert Nate Silver recently criticized his peers in the survey industry, accusing them of “cheating” in the final days leading up to the 2024 presidential election by recycling previous data to make the race between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris appear closer than it actually is.

The founder of FiveThirtyEight accused certain pollsters of “herding” — adjusting current survey results to mirror previous ones — so that Vice President Harris and former President Trump consistently appear within a tight margin of one another.

“I kind of trust pollsters less,” Silver expressed on his podcast, specifically calling out Emerson College. “They all, every time a pollster [says] ‘Oh, every state is just plus-one, every single state’s a tie,’ no! You’re … herding! You’re cheating! You’re cheating!” he said with frustration.

Silver continued, “Your numbers aren’t all going to come out at exactly one-point leads when you’re sampling 800 people over dozens of surveys,” venting his frustration at the consistency of these narrow polling leads.

“You are lying! You’re putting your … finger on the scale!” he added, underscoring his belief that certain pollsters are skewing results intentionally.

In his own widely respected model, Silver shows Trump leading Harris by a margin of 55% to 45%, just days before the election.

Silver’s frustration wasn’t limited to Democratic-leaning pollsters; he also took aim at “all these GOP-leaning firms” that repeatedly show Trump only slightly ahead, as if to convey a sense of cautious neutrality.

“If a pollster never publishes any numbers that surprises you, then it has no value,” he remarked, highlighting that polling should reflect real shifts rather than predictable ties.

With the exception of the New York Times, Silver expressed disdain for other pollsters, saying they were “just … punting on this election for the most part.”

However, he acknowledged that the latest polling still showed tight races in critical swing states. “But look, all seven swing states are still polling within it looks like a point and a half here,” he noted.

“It doesn’t take a genius to know that if every swing state is a tie, that the overall forecast is a tie,” he observed, emphasizing that a close race in key states translates to an overall close forecast.

Currently, Trump, 78, holds a slight edge over Harris, 59, in both national polls (+0.3%) and swing-state averages (+0.9%), based on data from RealClearPolitics.

In the final New York Times/Siena College poll conducted earlier this month, the two candidates were tied at 48% each.

Silver recently shared his personal take in a Times op-ed, admitting that his “gut says” Trump is likely to win, even though his model is data-driven.

“In an election where the seven battleground states are all polling within a percentage point or two, 50-50 is the only responsible forecast,” Silver wrote.

“Yet when I deliver this unsatisfying news, I inevitably get a question: ‘C’mon, Nate, what’s your gut say?’” he added. “So OK, I’ll tell you. My gut says Donald Trump. And my guess is that it is true for many anxious Democrats.”

Over recent election cycles, experts have pointed out that polling often misses Trump supporters, a phenomenon known as “nonresponse bias” that distorts results.

“It’s not that Trump voters are lying to pollsters; it’s that in 2016 and 2020, pollsters weren’t reaching enough of them,” Silver clarified in his op-ed.

Additionally, Silver mentioned that polling firms may sometimes misinterpret responses from voters on who they supported in the previous election.

He also observed that party identification is now roughly balanced, with “about as many people now identify as Republicans.”

Silver has been analyzing elections publicly since Barack Obama’s 2008 victory over John McCain and currently publishes his insights on his Substack, the “Silver Bulletin.”

{Matzav.com}