FORECASTS & TRENDS E-LETTER
by Gary D. Halbert
August 4, 2020

IN THIS ISSUE:

1. Voter “Expectations” Far More Reliable Than Voter “Intentions”

2. President Trump Holds Strong Lead in the Expectation Question

3. Conclusions: The Pollsters & Media Don’t Want Us to Know

Overview

It’s not often that I learn something new when it comes to politics and political polling in particular. Yet that’s exactly what happened last month. I’ll share what I’ve recently learned as we go along today.

I trust that most of my clients and readers keep up with at least some of the various presidential political polls on a fairly regular basis, especially with the election coming in less than 100 days. If so, what I’m going to tell you today should be very interesting.

Today, I share this new finding on my part and explain why it could have a HUGE EFFECT on the outcome of the November presidential election. I wish there was a way for me to know how many of my clients and readers are similarly unaware of what I’ll share with you below.

Voter “Expectations” Far More Reliable Than Voter “Intentions”

If I’m correct that you pay at least some attention to presidential polls, you are no doubt aware that President Donald Trump has been trailing his opponent, former Vice President Joe Biden, in the polls this year. Most polls have President Trump trailing Joe Biden by 7-10 points. RealClearPolitics.com, which averages several well-known presidential polls, has Biden ahead at 49.4% to Trump’s 42.0%, a lead of 7.4%. Trump has narrowed the gap a bit recently.

Nevertheless, most media pundits assure us that this gap is simply too wide for President Trump to close, especially with the election coming in just three months. Las Vegas oddsmakers are said to be betting heavily on Biden, no surprise there. Never mind that Trump overcame similar odds in 2016 when he beat Hillary Clinton.

However, I want us to dig a little deeper into the presidential polls today and look at the precise questions which are usually asked. Herein lies the something new I learned earlier this month. Question #1 in most presidential election polls usually is: “If the election were held today, who would you vote for?”

This question is referred to as the “intention” question. The collective answer to this question is what we hear about daily in the media in the form of poll results – such as the Biden49.4% to Trump 42% noted above.

Question #2 (if there is a Question #2) is: “Regardless of who you plan to vote for, who do you think will win the upcoming election?” For example, a voter may say: “I’m voting for A, but I believe B will win.” This question is referred to as the “expectation” question. Unfortunately, the media rarely cite the response to Question #2.

While not all presidential polls include Question #2, many do, and the results can vary greatly – as does their accuracy in predicting the likely election winner. We just don’t hear much if anything about Question #2. The question is, why?

Well, it turns out that respected researchers in the US and Europe have extensively studied whether the response to Question #1 or Question #2 is more reliable in predicting the likely outcome of the next presidential election. And the result will likely surprise you, as it did me last month.

In short, any pollster attempting to divine the outcome of a major election should pay far less attention to what survey respondents say about the candidate they plan to vote for (intention) than the candidate they actually believe is going to win (expectation). Researches in Europe, for example, concluded:

“Across the last 100 days prior to the seven [major] elections from 1988 to 2012, vote expectation surveys provided more accurate forecasts of election winners and vote shares than… vote intention polls [and others]. On average, expectation-based vote share forecasts were wrong 51% fewer times than the error of [other] polls published the same day.” Wow! 

That, of course, is strong evidence, but it gets even stronger. Voter expectation surveys have been with us since the 1930s but were never used widely in predicting major election results. However, that has been changing in recent years as it has become clear how much more reliable expectation polls are than intention questions. Here are the numbers experts found.

Researchers from the University of Michigan and the Microsoft Research Center studied all state-level presidential election polls from 1952 to 2008, which included both the intention question and the expectation question. The results are eye-opening!

“In the 77 cases where the intention and expectations questions predicted different candidates, the expectation question picked the winner 60 times, while the intention question picked the winner only 17 times. That is, 78% of the time these two approaches disagreed, and the expectation data was correct. Now that’s powerful!

President Trump Holds Strong Lead in the Expectation Question

Lately, pollsters and pundits have been nervously pondering the following question: “With Trump clearly behind in the polls, why do most voters say, in the same surveys, that he will win the upcoming election?” Great question!

As CNN’s Harry Enten recently reported, “An average of recent polls finds that a majority of voters (about 55%) believe that Trump will defeat Biden in the election. Trump’s edge on this question has remained fairly consistent over time.”

As noted just above, this is far more than mere statistical curiosity by number crunchers. Several peer-reviewed studies have shown that surveys of voter expectations are far more predictive of election outcomes than polls of voter intentions.

Professor Andreas Graefe of the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (LSU Munich), proclaims these ‘citizen forecasts,’ as they are sometimes categorized, are “the most accurate method that we have to predict election outcomes.”  US researchers have come to the same conclusions in recent years.

Many of the same polls that appear to portend a one-term presidency for Trump (intention) actually predict that the president could trounce Biden badly this November -- if the expectations question is asked. But we don’t hear about that. Again, the question is, why not?

And here’s the stunner (the new thing I learned):

As you know, Joe Biden leads President Trump by a comfortable margin (7-10 points) on the intention question (Who will you vote for?). What you probably don’t know (like me until recently) is that Trump leads Biden by a more than comfortable margin when the expectation question is asked (Who do expect to win?). And he’s been consistently winning on this question for quite a while now.

For example, in the latest Economist/YouGov poll that shows Trump down 49-40 nationally, only 39% of registered voters said Biden will beat him. In Pennsylvania (where Biden was born and is heavily favored to win), the latest Monmouth poll shows Biden trouncing Trump. Yet, when asked who will win, the voters say the election is a toss-up. This is huge!

Conclusions: The Pollsters & Media Don’t Want Us to Know

The bottom line is this: The media and most pollsters despise Trump, and they don’t want to report anything that indicates the president has any chance of winning the election. But the facts are the facts:

Repeated studies for years have shown that the candidate leading in the ‘expectation’ question, versus the ‘intention’ question is far more likely to win the election. And clearly President Trump is leading by a comfortable margin in the expectation category in most states.

Some of you, the liberals in this audience, will no doubt assume the reason for today’s topic is that I am grasping at straws that point to a Trump win. While I will again vote for Trump in November – as I did in 2016 – because I couldn’t vote for Hillary and won’t vote for Biden this year – I am not grasping at straws.

I would have brought this issue to your attention regardless whether Trump or Biden was ahead in the  ‘expectation’ polls. I mention it today because it is an important election indicator no matter which candidate is in the lead.

Whenever I learn something new that is important, I’ll share it with you, regardless of which political party it might favor, if at all.

As always, I welcome your comments and suggestions.

All the best,

Gary D. Halbert

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