As I try to understand public opinion in yet another presidential election year with former President Donald Trump as the Republican nominee, I see an anomaly.

On one hand, the polls look very much like the 2020 and 2016 election results. Trump trails Vice President Kamala Harris by 1.9 percentage points in the RealClearPolitics average of recent polls, for example. That margin looks a lot like the 2.1-point popular vote margin for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in November 2016 and is not qualitatively different from the 4.4-point popular vote margin for President Joe Biden in November 2020.