News about the Alabama Senate race is moving fast. Less than a week ago, most election watchers were still focused on off-year elections in Virginia, New Jersey, New York, Maine and other states. But on Thursday, the Washington Post published accounts of four different women who, as teenagers, were pursued by Roy Moore (the Republican candidate) while he was in his 30s. The Post’s reporting shows that Moore initiated sexual contact with one woman when she was 14 years old, and Monday a fifth woman came forward claiming that Moore sexually assaulted her when she was 16 years old.
When events like these unfold, it can be difficult to get a handle on the political consequences. The story can move quickly, making it difficult to gauge exactly what the electorate is hearing and how they’re responding.
That’s why I wrote up four quick tips for how to read the most recent Alabama polls and how to think about the surveys that’ll be released in the coming days and weeks.
First, look at the average as well as the trend within pollsters. The average tells a pretty clear story here. Earlier this month, Moore held a six point lead over Jones. After the Post story was published, his lead fell to two points. The math is simple—Moore’s lead seems to have diminished.
Additionally, every pollster makes different methodological choices, so it’s often useful to compare numbers from the same pollster over time. This type of comparison also suggests Moore has lost ground. Opinion Savvy showed Moore with a five point lead in late September, and they now have the race tied. JMC Analytics puts Democratic candidate Doug Jones ahead by four, and they had Moore ahead by eight less than two months ago. And Emerson, which has Moore up by 10 points, had him up by 22 earlier in the cycle.
In other words, the polls agree that the race has tightened significantly.
Second, remember that differences between polls don’t always boil down to statistical noise. Different pollsters make different predictions about what the electorate will look like, and it’s hard to know who’s right ahead of time. As others have noted, Moore performs better in polls that show a more Trump-friendly electorate. Also note that in some cases, partisan non-response can cause differences in the survey results—e.g. Republicans who still support Trump or Moore might not answer a pollster’s phone call after bad news airs about their preferred politician. While there’s evidence that that’s not all of what’s happening here, it’s still worth being aware of.
In other words, when you see polls diverge from each other over time, realize that the difference is sometimes more than simple randomness.
Third, don’t assume that a poll released on a given day perfectly encapsulates opinion on that day. Polls are often taken over multiple days, and after that pollsters take time to calculate results and prepare for publication. While the current batch of polling captures how opinion changed immediately after the initial Post story, none of the surveys were in the field long enough to gauge how the race changed after another woman came forward and as voters digested the news. In other words, events move fast and polls lag a bit behind them.
Finally, remember that polls can’t predict everything. For instance, an Opinion Savvy survey showed that Democratic candidate Doug Jones would benefit from a third party write-in campaign by Republican Sen. Luther Strange. This makes sense intuitively. Some Alabama Republicans dislike Moore and likely see his conduct towards teenage girls as unacceptable, so they might be willing to throw their support to a different Republican.
But no poll can tell us if another notable Republican is going to enter the race. They can help us understand hypotheticals, but careful reporting will likely shed more light on whether Alabamians will have a new option in December.
The bottom line here is that the polls are a useful guide to what’s going on in Alabama, but they are (like every source of information) limited. So keep an eye on the polls, keep watching the news, and remember that the race is much closer than what we usually see in Alabama.
