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Originally Posted by octothorp
A theory I've been rolling around in my mind regarding polls possibly *still* underrating Trump's support, but for a different reason.
I'm pessimistic that what the polls say about undecided voters is true. This is entirely anecdotal and so not something you can wrap into a polling model, but every time I read surveys with undecided voters, I read them saying things that suggest that they aren't going to behave like traditional undecided voters that are simply low-information. For example after the debate, on one panel I read an undecided saying how weird it was that Harris was so articulate when she was usually 'word salad', while Trump on the other hand seemed to get distracted far more easily, almost like he had been drugged, and that there was something suspicious going on with the whole debate. That's voter is not someone you can win over by being the better candidate. That's just one particularly egregious example, but there have been others.
In this environment where each candidate has been so well known for so long, I wonder how many people who claim to be undecided are simply people who have built skepticism into their self-identity. I've thought a lot about how people get roped into conspiracy theories and how hard it is to break them out of believing them (and how easy it is for such people to get roped into additional conspiracy theories). The more someone sees being skeptical as part of who they are, the more they're going to resist evidence, no matter how convincing, because it forces them to change their self-identity. And potentially at least some of those people are going to always answer a poll as being undecided because being undecided validates that self-identity. Those people would consider being undecided on the election as being a virtue.
Again, I acknowledge that this is anecdotal. If I was a pollster, something I'd test here is polling to see if there's any correlation between undecided voters and belief in various conspiracy theories like chemtrails or vaccines causing autism. I'd expect that most people who are heavily invested in conspiracy theories are already strong Trump supporters, including those who believe absolutely in these conspiracy theories. But my hunch is that you'd find undecideds giving validity to conspiracy theories at a higher overall rate than the average population, particularly if you allowed a response like 'I think that this is a valid concern that needs more research.'
All of this comes out of reading an article today suggesting that the polls are better than we think for Harris because the number of undecideds are so small, and a +2 lead with 3% undecided is much better than a +2 lead with 10% undecided (as Hillary was sometimes during 2016). But my concern is that these 'skepticism is a virtue' crowd make up a significant amount of that undecided percentage and that most of them will ultimately vote for Trump because the conspiracy theory bubble has far more conspiracies about the left. Maybe I'm vastly overrating the number of people who behave like that, or maybe they're mostly already identifying as Trump supporters in polls. But it's a mindset that I'm very nervous about.
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I am hopeful it will be the reverse this year, that polls will over estimate Trumps support for the simple reason he has completely cheaped out and ignored the ground level organization necessary to get the vote out, I suspect a lot of Trumps supporters will say they want to vote Trump but without the local office calling them up and letting them know where the polling station is, hours etc and nagging them a larger than usual percentage wont actually vote.
Trump has all but ignored ground level organization and dismantled the GOP's in house staff that should support the state level organizations, the effect of this though will not be caught by polls at all