Times/Sienna

 Throughout this cycle, Times/Sienna has been the most Republican friendly "reputable" pollster. There are a host of pollsters who are just objectively terrible (Trafalgar, Atlas, Rasmussen) and designed to skew polling averages. The Times, however, is unlikely to be doing that. It feels instead like they are really, really wary of repeating the polling errors of 2016 and even 2020. 

Every poll has always had a sampling issue and today it has gotten much, much worse. When people actually answered the phone, you could get a good, random sample. Today, who answers a call from an unknown number? So a pollster has to make an educated guess about the composition of the electorate. The Times has taken the position that there are those "shy Trump voters" who need to be sampled more heavily than other pollsters are doing. 

This can lead to some head scratching results. Today's poll has Trump +5 in Arizona. The previous poll had Harris at +5 there. They are suggesting that the result of the debate is a...10 point swing to Trump? Meanwhile, the same pollster has Ruben Gallego's senate run at 49-50% while Trump ranges from 48-50%.  That's a LOT of Trump-Gallego voters in an era of very little ticket splitting. If you look at all the polling from Arizona, it very much looks like a tied race. Arizona is a true toss-up. The Times somehow has a better result for Trump than Trafalgar. That's odd.

Meanwhile, most of the polling from Pennsylvania shows Harris building a steady but narrow lead of about 2 points. Same with Michigan. In Wisconsin, you have results like MassINC and Morning Consult that show Harris up 6 and Emerson showing Trump up 2. That's a significant discrepancy. 

Ultimately, I think the difference very well could be the old school get out the vote operations. We know that Harris has a massive cash advantage. Trump's campaign money comes from oligarch's PACs and they typical funnel money to consultants who make expensive ad buys. Campaigns are won by getting your voters to the polls. The GOP simply does not have that machinery at the moment and voting has begun in some states. 

The hollowing out of the RNC should have very real consequences in this election, if the race really is this close.