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Los Angeles Times

Why you should stop looking at 2024 election polls in the coming weeks

Los Angeles Times
Summary
Nutrition label

85% Informative

Over the last 14 presidential elections, national polls have been off by an average of 2.2 percentage points.

Polling error is much bigger than either candidate’s edge.

Democrats have gained ground among white, college-educated voters and Republicans have picked up Black and Latino voters.

That means U.S. politics is less polarized by race and ethnicity.

David Gergen : Exit polls will give us some preliminary clues, but we won't know for sure until researchers can delve into the data months after the votes get counted.

He says campaigns have more data than public pollsters, but that’s no guarantee that they know better who will win.

Gergen says internal’ polls won’t tell you, either; polls are subject to same limitations as public polls.

In low-turnout elections, the people who cast ballots are almost all regular voters with a consistent track record.

High-turning elections draw a lot of new voters.

In 2020 , when turnout hit a record, about one in four voters hadn’t cast a ballot four years earlier .

VR Score

90

Informative language

90

Neutral language

52

Article tone

informal

Language

English

Language complexity

41

Offensive language

not offensive

Hate speech

not hateful

Attention-grabbing headline

not detected

Known propaganda techniques

not detected

Time-value

short-lived

External references

26

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