It took some pollsters only a few minutes to tell us that V.P. Biden, or #21, has a nine-point lead on President Trump.
It reminded some of us of other polls from days gone by, such as this one from the spring of 1983, when President Ronald Reagan was coming out of the 1981–82 recession:
The headline links to a Morning Consult story that found Biden with a 42 percent to 34 percent lead over President Trump in a hypothetical matchup.
“Along with his advantage over Trump, Biden has held a consistent lead in Morning Consult’s weekly tracking among likely Democratic primary voters,” the report says.
But the only thing shocking about this poll is that anyone would put any stock in such polls so early in the race. Just ask President John Glenn.
In May 1983, a Gallup poll came out showing that then-Sen. John Glenn would do better in a matchup against President Reagan, with a far wider margin than the Biden/Trump split.
As the New York Times reported on May 19 of that year, the survey “found that Senator Glenn led Mr. Reagan 54 percent to 37 percent.”
At that point, the eventual Democratic nominee, Walter Mondale, had a 49 percent to 43 percent edge over Reagan.
A Harris survey in July 1983 concluded that “it seems certain that the 1984 presidential election will be close, with neither the President nor his most probable Democratic opponents assured of any solid lead.”
Actual result: Reagan won a massive landslide over Mondale, getting almost 59% of the popular vote and 525 electoral votes — winning every state except Mondale’s home state of Minnesota.
The story points out that President George W. Bush was also trailing Senator Lieberman in the spring of 2003 by nine.
My point is that voters vote on Election Day, not 19 months in advance.
The moral of the story is to read polls with a little dose of healthy skepticism.
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