The most accurate pollster nationally in the United States in the last two election cycles has been Atlas Intel. In 2020 the public opinion research firm overestimated Biden by 0.2 points. In 2022 they overestimated the GOP by 0.3 points in the generic Congressional ballot. Impressively, in both cycles, they got the final results within a few tenths of a point.
That is why it was amazing news for the Trump campaign when they released their new national poll on 14 September. It showed President Trump leading Vice President Kamala Harris by 2.9 points.
That would be the biggest popular vote victory for the Republican Party in a presidential election since 1988. Furthermore, while virtually all other pollsters showed a trend in favour of Harris in the same time period, Atlas Intel actually measured a trend in the opposite direction since late July, when Harris became the presumptive nominee for the Democratic Party.
‘President Trump leading Vice President Kamala Harris by 2.9 points would mean the biggest popular vote victory for the Republican Party in a presidential election since 1988’
This data has been corroborated to some extent by another polling firm that has been historically very accurate in presidential elections. Gallup has recently released a report which shows Republicans leading their 2024 third-quarter average monthly party identification index by three points in September, exactly as Atlas Intel indicated. Meanwhile, Gallup has President Joe Biden’s most recent approval rating at just 39 per cent.
However, as we all know, it is not the popular vote that determines the winner of the US presidential election.
This weekend Atlas Intel also released a set of polling for the seven major swing states that will almost certainly determine the identity of the next POTUS. Based on that polling data, Donald Trump would win the election today with 290 electoral votes.
He is up in Michigan by 3.4 points, up in Pennsylvania by 2.9 points, up in Wisconsin by 1.5 points, up in Arizona by 1.2 points, and up in Georgia by just 0.6 points. Meanwhile, Harris is leading in North Carolina by 2.4 points and in Nevada by 2.8 points.
While this shows a Trump victory by a decent margin, it does not seem to line up with an R+3 national environment that Atlas Intel’s latest nationwide polling suggests, which would indicate a much bigger victory for Trump in the Electoral College. However, due to the significantly smaller sample size, state polling tends to be a lot less accurate than national polling. Such discrepancies are present with every major pollster in the country.
What is more interesting, however, is that it goes against the trend measured by all other public opinion firms in the US. Other firms showed the so-called ‘Sunbelt states’, Arizona, Georgia, and North Carolina, slipping out of reach for the Harris camp; and giving her the best chance to win the election in ‘the Rust Belt’, that is, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan. Atlas Itel has found the exact opposite.
‘Based on the polling data by Atlas Intel Donald Trump would win the election today with 290 electoral votes’
It makes sense at first glance, since Harris does not seem to be the type of candidate who would do well with the white working class, which is a much more substantial voting bloc in the Rust Belt states than in the Sun Belt states. Teamsters, one of the biggest trade unions in the US consisting of truck drivers and manual labour workers, refused to endorse her: it is the first time they did not officially back a Democrat for President in over half a century. They also released their internal polling, which shows Trump leading Harris by double digits within their union. In the case of Joe Biden before he dropped out, the opposite was true. Teamsters President Sean O’Brien even spoke at the Republican National Convention in July, although he withheld his organization’s official endorsement from Trump as well.
Again, Atlas Intel’s findings were seemingly reinforced. In leaked audio footage, Democrat Senate candidate for Michigan Elissa Stolkin admitted to donors that Kamala Harris’ internal polling shows her losing the state.
However, it is not all good news for President Trump.
He is still behind Harris in RealClearPolitics national polling aggregate by 2.0 points. While the RCP aggregate has always been accurate in predicting the popular vote winner, Donald Trump is trailing behind Harris right now by a smaller margin than he was underestimated by in 2020. Then, he performed better against Joe Biden nationally by 2.7 points compared to the RCP average on election day.
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