"Trump underperforming primary polls = Trump underperforming GE polls": Copium or not?

[Woody]

What are the arguments for and against this?

[Annatar]

Every election cycle there are new types of analysis that arise which claim to be able to predict the direction of polling error, they are pretty much always wrong. In terms of the argument that Trump underperforming his primary election polls means he will underperform the general election ones, we need someone to show evidence of this happening in a previous cycle.  

Is there evidence of a previous case where underperforming primary polls led to an underperformance of the general election polling, if there isn’t evidence, hard to claim somehow this cycle this indicator will predict polling error.

[emailking]

It's not necessarily wrong (though it could be). But he didn't really underperform last night.

[SnowLabrador]

It's copium. You can't equate primaries to general elections. You just can't.

[Skill and Chance]

Didn't Trump underperform his 2016 primary polls in the early states?

[Compuzled_One]

Didn't Trump underperform his 2016 primary polls in the early states?

He overperformed massively in NH. I believe SC to.

[Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers]

The polls are trash

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

No way to tell until November.

Donald the lying, rapist, traitor is consistently underperforming his primary polling by about 7 points. That's real.

That is vanishingly unlikely to have any impact on the nomination. ("Republicans" appear to largely be accepting of lies, rape and treason.)

Polls being consistently wrong is bad for the credibility of the polls. IF 7% of likely Trump voters get last minute cold feet in the general, that's terrible for him. But I don't think we can tell if it actually means anything until November.

[Arizona Iced Tea]

The only contest I feel like Trump truly underperformed the polls was NH. Winning by 42 vs an average of 52 isn't as bad as say winning by 11 when the average was 20. As you get to higher and higher margins, the accuracy of the polling is going to have diminishing returns.

[Holmes]

Depends whether it's the same samples pollsters are using when polling the primary and general, I guess.

[wbrocks67]

I wouldn't say it's cope, we just don't know. But it lends itself to the possibility of it happening in the GE polls.

IMO the bigger story here is Trump either gets his share of the polls or underperforms while Haley has scooped up the undecided/soft vote that hasn't indicated support for Trump.

Seems to be a good allegory of what could easily happen with Biden/Trump in the polls and the election results.

[DrScholl]

If polls are overstating him in primaries then there is reason to believe they are overstating him in the general election.

[The Economy is Getting Worse]

Every election cycle there are new types of analysis that arise which claim to be able to predict the direction of polling error, they are pretty much always wrong. In terms of the argument that Trump underperforming his primary election polls means he will underperform the general election ones, we need someone to show evidence of this happening in a previous cycle.  

Is there evidence of a previous case where underperforming primary polls led to an underperformance of the general election polling, if there isn’t evidence, hard to claim somehow this cycle this indicator will predict polling error.

The opposite happened in Iowa 2016. Trump underperformed in the primary but outperformed in the general.

[Progressive Pessimist]

I don't know for sure, but it certainly seems like people answering polls are more pro-Trump/anti-Biden than those turning out to vote.

[Ljube]

I don't know for sure, but it certainly seems like people answering polls are more pro-Trump/anti-Biden than those turning out to vote.

Perhaps it's the reverse shy Trump effect.
Maybe people are ashamed of saying they are for Biden, since he is obviously cognitively impaired.