Polls from the summer of 2016 are similar to the current polling ahead of the 2020 November presidential election, 360aproko News contributor Charlie Hurt said Friday.
“If you look at the polling today as opposed to four years ago, it is actually tracking remarkably similarly and, of course, we know how that turned out,” Hurt told “360aproko news.”
Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden is up 49-42% over President Donald Trump in a head-to-head matchup, according to a national 360aproko News survey of registered voters. Nine percent are undecided or back a third-party candidate.
Since March 2019, Trump’s support has stayed between 38-42%, and Biden’s lead has been outside the poll’s margin of sampling error 16 times. At the same time, the Democrat’s current 7-point lead is a bit lower than his 8-point advantage last month (49-41%) and 12-point lead in June (50-38%).
Despite Biden’s lead, when asked who their neighbors are supporting, voters put Trump on top: 39% think the folks next door are going for the president, while 34% say Biden
“One of the most interesting things about this poll is that not only did it ask who are you going to vote for in November, it also asked who are your neighbors going to vote for,” Hurt said.
Hurt called that a “little trick” used by pollsters when they suspect people are not being totally honest about who they will support.
“When they ask who are you going to support, Biden does better. When you ask who are your neighbors going to support, Trump does better,” Hurt said.
The poll was conducted Sunday through Wednesday, so over half of the interviews were completed before Tuesday’s announcement of California Sen. Kamala Harris as Biden’s running mate.
“They’re afraid that people are not being completely honest with a stranger that called them on the phone and asked them do you still support Donald Trump after all this incredibly negative stuff that you hear about him in the media,” Hurt said.
“It does suggest that maybe there is some gap between what people are telling pollsters and what people will actually do in November. President Trump obviously likes to talk about that and that was certainly something that we saw in 2016 and I think that it is clearly something going on here today.”
