Could Trump still win? How the 2020 US election polls could be getting it wrong all over again

Things are looking gloomy for Trump. Almost every poll has him trailing Joe Biden by a large margin nationally and by smaller, but still substantial, amounts in key swing states. Early voting patterns also seem to heavily favour Democrats. And yet, the question on the lips of many – still scarred by the upset of the 2016 race – is could Trump still somehow win?

Indeed, a few outlets paint a very different picture of the race, one in which Trump’s strength has, again, been significantly underrated. The most notable organisation here is the Trafalgar Group – which successfully predicted Trump’s victory in 2016. According to their polls Trump is leading Biden by a thin margin in the key swing states of Pennsylvania (46.7% to 45.8%), Michigan (46.5% to 45.9%), and Florida (48.4% to 46.1%) – and only trails narrowly in Wisconsin (47.6% to 46.3%).

The reason that their polls differ so dramatically from nearly every other stems from the fact that, in additional to the usual techniques pollsters use to average out voter preferences, Trafalgar’s key innovation is to adjust for what it calls “social desirability”. In essence, they try and calculate the likelihood that people will tell you the truth, as opposed to what they think you want to hear, when you ask them who they plan to vote for and adjust accordingly. They argue that, in an atmosphere in which people might be embarrassed to admit to voting for Trump this can make all the difference.

Others point to potential Democratic Party weaknesses that might yet trip Biden up. Trump and his campaign continue to barnstorm rallies across the country – leaving a trail of motivated supporters, and possibly spiking coronavirus infection rates, in his wake. Meanwhile, Biden and Kamala Harris – taking a more cautious approach to the pandemic – are almost inaccessible.

Biden may be doing better these days with set-piece speeches, but worries about a lack of Democrat ground game due to the pandemic also extends to door-knocking. While coronavirus means that Democrats have by and large avoided doing this, Republicans have persisted, leading to fears they will be able to build a voter registration advantage.

Finally, we have the hovering question of whether courts might intervene in favour of Trump in what looks likely to be a messy count due to the pandemic. The fact that three of the nine Supreme Court Justices (John Roberts, Brett Kavanaugh, and the newly-confirmed Amy Coney Barrett) were on George W. Bush’s legal team when he won the bitter legal fight over 2000’s dispute election is the stuff of Democratic nightmares.

Still, there is also good reason to treat these claims cautiously. Evidence seems to suggest that there really aren’t that many “shy Trump voters”. Indeed, anecdotally, many reporters on the ground have found that Trump voters are rarely embarrassed by their preferences. Some local Republican officials have even suggested people might have become more willing to voice support for him than they were in 2016.

As for the ground game, Biden’s famous calculation that every time Trump speaks the Democrats do better seems to be – to an extent – justified by the available data. Polls have registered support for Trump actually dipping in those states and counties in which he has campaigned in recently. As for door-knocking, a growing body of evidence suggests that it is not necessarily any more effective than other methods when it comes to convincing voters to turn out. Polling data also suggests voter turnout is in fact spiking among Democrat leaning groups.

Indeed, Trump’s most obvious strength remains the courts. The best outcome he can likely hope for is a narrow messy set of results on the election day itself, followed by bitter legal wrangling. As a businessman, he had a knack of somehow walking away the richer from collapsing projects beset by lawsuits. Might he manage it again as President of the United States? There’s one week left to go until we begin to find out…

Joseph Rachman is reporting from Washington D.C.