Two gargantuan caveats must accompany every story about polling results.
First, establishment pollsters have a recent history of extreme inaccuracy. And second, their errors have all tended to favor Democratic presidential nominees, which suggests at least the possibility of design.
With that in mind, former President Donald Trump received even better news than expected from a New York Times/Siena College poll released on Sunday, which showed him holding a one-point lead nationwide over Vice President Kamala Harris ahead of their presidential debate in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on Tuesday.
One Times writer called the result “surprising” but also noted that it could signal a shift toward Trump.
In truth, however, that shift began when former independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. allied with Trump last month.
The Times/Siena poll, therefore, comes as a surprise only because of the establishment news outlet’s honesty about its meaning.
In late July, of course, Democratic elites staged a coup to force President Joe Biden from the race. For weeks thereafter, the establishment media conducted Harris’s campaign for her.
It turns out, however, that the fawning press can only carry the weakest candidate in modern history for so long.
“Mr. Trump may have had a rough month following the president’s departure and amid the burst of excitement that Ms. Harris brought Democrats, but the poll suggests his support remains remarkably resilient,” the Times admitted.
Some voters undoubtedly have noticed that Harris refuses to speak except in the most scripted settings. Indeed, the vice president’s reluctance to answer questions even from friendly reporters has reached comic proportions.
Likewise, some voters might have discovered her extreme dishonesty, inauthenticity and propensity for speaking in word salads.
Furthermore, surely those same voters have noticed her policy-related flip-flops and spectacular failure as “border czar.”
Whatever the reason for her decline in the polls, there is no question that the decline began long before the Times/Siena poll registered it, for other establishment pollsters have noticed the same trend.
