Polls! What are they good for? Absolutely nothing, except for driving yourself bonkers. Oh look: Donald Trump is up by two points. Wait, it looks like Kamala Harris is up by five points. Yikes, now Trump is up by one-nineteenth of a point. Now, according to a much discussed NBC News poll that came out on Sunday, Trump and Harris are neck and neck.
As the US election draws closer, I have developed a severe case of poll-tigue. Can we just give the damn things a rest already? As we all know, polling is an inexact science at the best of times. More importantly, pretty much all the results of recent Trump-Harris polls have been within the margin of error. The fact that this new poll shows Harris tied with Trump (within the margin of error) while a poll in September showed that Harris was leading Trump (also within the margin of error) might signal that the Harris honeymoon is officially over, but ultimately, it’s not that big a deal. You can scrutinise the numbers ad infinitum, but when it comes down to it, the truth is that nobody knows what is going to happen in November other than it’s (probably) going to be very close. Polls are basically astrology for political nerds at this point.
Speaking of which, professional astrologers have their own murky methods for predicting the outcome of elections and they seem just as confused as everyone else. Laurie Rivers, a political analyst turned astrologer with more than 235,000 TikTok followers, told the Economist she sees Harris winning “overwhelmingly”. Meanwhile, Amy Tripp, another influential astrologist, has said Trump will win and she can make “objective” forecasts because she is an Aquarius.
I’m not an Aquarius, but I’ve also been dabbling in some “objective” forecasting. I recently devised two unorthodox polling methods, the results of which I will exclusively present in this column. In terms of methodology, both surveys were conducted by me in Philadelphia – the biggest city in Pennsylvania, which is probably the most important swing state in the US. In other words: very serious stuff.
Let’s start with Arwa’s Little Walk poll. On Monday I counted all the political signs I saw displayed in people’s houses on the 10-minute walk from my house to my child’s preschool. The final tally? Twenty-six Harris/Walz signs, zero Trump signs and one sign for “Giant Meteor 2024”. (That sign did not belong to me, but I share the sentiment.) In short: a giant meteor has a better chance of winning my little stretch of Philadelphia than Trump. What does this mean? Well, it means I live in a liberal bubble. And, also, that I might be on some kind of neighbourhood watch list now because I peered into so many strangers’ windows.
We’ll call the next experiment the Rascal Eats a Treat poll. I put a brown treat in one hand (representing Harris) and a pink treat in another (representing Trump), then I asked my dog Rascal to pick a hand. Much to Rascal’s delight, I conducted this experiment multiple times. And guess what? Every single time he picked the Harris indicator. At first I thought that meant my dog was a savant trapped in a chihuahua’s scruffy little body. Then, of course, I realised Rascal could smell the difference between the treats and simply preferred one artificial flavour to the other. As an objective Aries, I will admit that this poll would probably not stand up to serious scrutiny.
That said, the Rascal treat test is not quite as ridiculous as it might sound. The Busken Bakery in Cincinnati has been running a presidential Cookie poll since 1984. It sells cookies with candidate’s faces on them and the highest-selling cookie candidate has won nine out of 10 elections (2020 was the outlier). A random bakery has been right just as many times as Allan Lichtman, the distinguished professor who is famous for his 13 “keys” to the White House. (Lichtman got 2020 right but 2000 wrong.) And the bakery has certainly done better than many pollsters.
In all seriousness – and before the Guardian gets inundated with complaints from the Association for Preserving the Reputation of Political Polling – I should clarify that polls aren’t a complete waste of time. The latest NBC poll is yet another reminder that the US is a deeply divided country and this election will be won on the margins. And my own polls show that Rascal is a dog of discerning taste.
• Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist
