Nearly 30 years ago I came up with what I nowadays call Hayward’s First Law of Inverse Poll Quality. The law holds: the more famous the poll or pollster, the lower the quality of the poll, and vice-versa; unknown pollsters are likely to provide better or more thorough polls.
I first perceived this when I saw from the inside the internal polling for two major ballot initiatives in California. The survey work was done by low-profile and largely unknown pollsters whose work you never saw reported in the media. But it was astoundingly good in helping to formulate campaign strategy and tactical execution, and moreover, some of the findings of these pollsters contradicted, or at least rendered superficial, the reported public polls. The complete polls were always much more in-depth with second-, third- and fourth-order questions.
There are caveats and exceptions to this law, of course, and some pollsters conservatives like, such as Rasmussen and Trafalgar, seem to be much more accurate than many of the more “mainstream” polls, as this chart shows:
This comes to mind because of an apparent discrepancy in the Trump-Harris race between the highly reported public polls (i.e., NY Times/Siena, Emerson, Quinnipiac, etc.) and the private polls of the two campaigns. Most of the public polls continue to show Harris with a small but durable lead over Trump nationally, and in several of the major swing states, too.
But over the last week, word has been leaking out that the internal polls of both campaigns are telling a different story—that Trump is pulling ahead in six of the seven swing states, and Harris is slumping. Democrats and the Harris camp are said to be deeply worried; the Trump camp is increasingly confident. Reporters like Mark Halperin, who usually have good sources, believe these rumors and leaks are true. (See the five minute video below.) The fact that the betting markets are swinging hard in Trump’s direction this week ratifies this reporting.
Question: Why is there a discrepancy between the public polls and private campaign polls? Refer again to Hayward’s First Law. Internal polls for campaigns need to be accurate, rather than newsworthy. Private campaign pollsters care about getting the results right—not in generating headlines. Their samples are more targeted and robust, taking “likely voter” screens more seriously than a media organization does, and probing with extra attention for certain voting groups where the candidate is strong or weak to detect problems. A media-backed pollster rolls on even if they are wrong. The unknown pollsters who do the campaign tracking polls don’t stay in business if their polls are as wildly wrong as so many public polls have been in the last few cycles.
Bottom line: Go with the campaign private polls; ignore the flashy media polls.
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