Hey look — more polls! David may want to play Captain Killjoy and discourage us from taking these too seriously, but what fun is that? Especially a few days before Election Day, when pollsters are lining up their shots for best accuracy to the eventual results?
And especially when the results look … good? Good-ish, perhaps?
Well, we’ll see. Atlas Intel, who did quite well in a bleak polling environment four years ago, shows Donald Trump leading in all of the battleground states. “Leading” may be a term of art here, though:
JUST IN: The most accurate poll of 2020, AtlasIntel, releases their final battleground poll showing Trump winning all 7 battleground states.
Finish strong, vote, and make this a reality.
Arizona: Trump +5
North Carolina: Trump +4
Nevada: Trump +4
Georgia: Trump +2… pic.twitter.com/IEeJFnxgnX— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) October 31, 2024
- Arizona: Trump +5
- North Carolina: Trump +4
- Nevada: Trump +4
- Georgia: Trump +2
- Pennsylvania: Trump +1
- Michigan: Trump +1
- Wisconsin: Trump +.3
If this is how the election plays out, Trump would win 312 electoral votes.
“If” carries a pretty heavy load here. Far be it from me to look gift horses in the mouth, but this is still one pollster — and the numbers are very tight where Trump needs them the most. (Besides, “most accurate pollster of 2020” is something akin to “most accurate NFL analyst” in the preseason.)
These numbers basically mirror the trends we see in the RCP aggregates. The exceptions are stronger leads in Arizona, Nevada, and North Carolina. The +0.3 in Wisconsin is clearly a dead-heat result that looks slightly better than the Harris +0.2 at RCP, and the +1.0 in Michigan that’s even more positive than the Harris +0.5 at RCP.
It’s better to be slightly ahead than slightly behind, to be sure, but the Blue Wall state results are all virtual dead heats. And that’s a problem for Trump if he can’t close any of them out. Trump could win all of the other four states, but if he loses PA, MI, and WI, he only gets to 268 on the map, unless he can find another state to flip.
For what it’s worth, Atlas Intel is ranked 22nd at FiveThirtyEight, a pretty good rating out of 282 ranked polling firms. Coming in right behind at #23 is Echelon Insights, who has better news in Pennsylvania for Trump. In fact, it’s so good it may be unbelievable:
#NEW FINAL PENNSYLVANIA poll
🔴 Trump: 52% (+6)
🔵 Harris: 46%Echelon Insights | 10/27-30 | N=600LV
— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) October 31, 2024
Trump +6? It’s possible, but that’s actually on just a two-way poll. Echelon’s full-ballot results have Trump up five at 51/46. That’s still a significant outlier as I’ll explain in a moment, but let’s run through a couple of more points. Echelon asked voters about a Harris/Josh Shapiro ticket, and it narrowed Trump’s lead to 50/48. They also have Dave McCormick up three points over Bob Casey in the Senate election, 47/44, when no other pollster has McCormick in the lead.
So yes, this would be great news … if it’s accurate. And note too that they’re the only pollster making a call on a gap this wide in PA since, well, since shortly after Joe Biden debated Donald Trump. Neither candidate has gotten better than a +5 from any PA poll since then, and the last time was a mid-September Bloomberg poll that put Harris up 51/46. The widest gap in October polling has been three points, which Harris got once and Trump got three times, with the latest being an earlier iteration from Atlas.
All of this is data, however, and we can assess and consider it in context. I’d rather see this than a bunch of polls showing Trump slightly behind. Just don’t start measuring the drapes yet — and go out and vote.
