React to this polling map on 11/04/2024

[MT Treasurer]

Even in states where polls used to consistently underestimate Democrats (NV, AZ, TX, etc.), Republican performance in 2020 (and in some cases already in 2018) was underestimated. This was also evident in NJ-GOV 2021, even though NJ polls had been extremely accurate in the past.

The bottom line is that this has increasingly become a cross-state phenomenon where old patterns no longer apply, as overall/national coalition changes are more powerful than any traditional or peculiar local traditions at this point (New England is still somewhat of an exception to this, but that may be changing soon). This trend will only accelerate as the D base becomes more affluent, suburban, and engaged and Republicans rely more on non-college-educated, lower-propensity, minority, and even urban voters in addition to their rural/small-town base (which many pollsters already struggle to reach, especially in the Midwest). Ironically, those same groups contributed to the pro-D bias in (often) the exact same states during the Obama era. You’re going to have an increasingly harder time pointing to even one state in which polls are likely to "underestimate" Democrats under our current realignment of party coalitions.