Biden catching Trump in the polls is red herring and probably not even true

I have long since believed that most pollsters are trying to push, rather than report, on trends and results.

One of the buzz stories that keeps popping up on a lot of my feeds is the idea that Biden is making a big polling comeback. Is this an actual thing or are we just seeing statistical noise.

One thing I have learned is that the difference between real polling trends and statistical noise is not found by looking at the polls, but rather by looking at the news. If there was nothing "newsworthy" that would seek to suggest a reasoning for a polling shift, then you are generally seeing noise.

This can happen for reasons no more complicated than a situation where polls historically favorable to a particular candidate all happen to be released around the same time while polls historically favorable to the other candidate start to drop from averages. This is why my spreadsheet does not just "drop" a poll because it is seven days old (or whatever). I keep poll results of all consistent pollsters and only drop the old result when a new result is reported. So, my averages will include all of the pollsters, both good and bad for each candidate. Sure, this would not capture the reaction from the most recent 24 buzz story, but I see that as a net plus. If the buzz story has the ability to create a long-term shift, then we will see that long term. If it is just a passing deal, then why overcompensate for it. This is why my polling spreadsheet is slow to move.

Now what I believe is going on right now to some degree is not just a shift in how the voters are feeling, but rather it can include how those commissioning polls are feeling. A couple months ago, there was a ton of momentum to replace Joe Biden on the ballot. We saw a snowball effect where the more people talked about replacing him, the more he dropped in the polls. Did that drop show a true reflection of how voters viewed Joe Biden as a President? Were the calls making some people question Biden? Were some respondents gaming the system by saying they would not vote for Biden because they wanted him replaced? Were there pollsters commissioning polls in a manner unfavorable to the President with the hope of pushing forward the narrative that Biden needed to be replaced?

I would offer that it was much more likely to be the latter examples, rather than a true reflection of how voters viewed Biden. Now that the replace Biden movement has lost momentum, the media will be back to the concept of pushing the inevitability of Biden and convincing people that he will win. I expect that the usual media polls (ABC/WaPo, NBC/WSJ, CBS/NYT, CNN, FOX, etc.) will start to move in favor of Biden. I also expect that these polls will create stories, but that those stories will not reflect reality.

At the end of the day, even when you factor in whatever recent movement there is in the polling, Trump still leads by well over two percent in the key battleground states. In both 2016 and 2020 he was well behind in many of those states and still won in 2016 and came within 40,000 votes of pulling off a victory in 2020. So rather than look at the polling in a vacuum, you have to compare the 2024 polling with his previous polling. Right now, Trump is running ahead of his 2020 numbers by over seven percent and running ahead of 2016 by double digits. Trump is currently leading in enough states to win over 300 Electoral College votes. He doesn't even have to overperform polls in 2024 to win (as he did in 2016 and almost did in 2020). He can literally underperform and still win.

Momentum will continue to be a story as the election season comes into full swing. But momentum is generally fleeting, and you need to really stay patient if you want to see the big picture. Right now, there is no real Biden momentum in my mind as there is not really a true significant change in the overall numbers. Maybe a month from now we will see a real change, but I am not convinced that Joe Biden did anything or that the economy did anything or that the world changed in any manner that makes voting for Joe Biden more attractive.