Understanding the Methodology Behind the Polling Data: A Detailed Explanation

The latest polling data from The Telegraph’s national voting intention tracker shows a tight race between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump in a potential 2024 election matchup. The methodology used by The Telegraph relies on a variety of US polls aggregated by FiveThirtyEight, with only head-to-head matchups between Harris and Trump considered.

Polls of registered voters are used to update the national voting intention tracker hourly, with a locally estimated scatterplot smoothing (LOESS) model applied to fit multiple regressions over subsets of the data. Polls are weighted based on the grade assigned to the pollster by FiveThirtyEight, taking into account past accuracy and methodological transparency.

The running predictor of electoral college votes takes an average of the last five polls from each state, with states categorized as “solidly,” “leaning,” or “tossup” based on the margin between the candidates. The swing state tracker monitors the latest polls in each battleground state.

In addition to polling data, approval ratings for President Joe Biden and Vice President Harris are compared to Trump’s ratings at the same point in his term. The favorability of potential vice-presidential picks JD Vance and Tim Walz is also analyzed.

With the 2024 election on the horizon, the race between Harris and Trump is heating up, and The Telegraph’s detailed methodology provides valuable insights into the current political landscape.