Everyone remembers the wildly inaccurate predictions of a Hillary Clinton landslide right up through the morning of Election Day 2016.  The New York Times confidently predicted Clinton with an 85-percent chance of winning.  Reuters gave Clinton a 90-percent chance, and ABC News gave her a 95-percent chance of being elected president.  (You can see more of those inaccurate polls here.)

I suspect that the polls were biased, in part, and their methodology was obsolete.  Also, there may have been some trickery at work with Trump voters deliberately deceiving pollsters.

With this in mind, we are now being told that Joe Biden has opened up a double-digit lead over President Trump in the latest 2020 presidential election polling data.  I submit that many Trump voters are being less than candid with pollsters, even more so than they were in 2016.

One Gallup polling question may be shedding light on this phenomenon.  When asked who will win the election, voters responded as follows (emphasis added):

Majority of Americans Predict Trump Will Win Reelection

Regardless of whom they personally support, 56% of Americans expect Trump to prevail over Biden in the November election, while 40% think Biden will win. Although majorities of partisans think their party's candidate will win, Republicans are more likely to believe Trump will win (90%) than Democrats are to think Biden will (73%). Fifty-six percent of independents predict that Trump will win.

With this type of question, voters may let their guards down and provide a truthful answer.  Since the pollster didn't ask for whom they were voting, Trump voters may feel more at ease by subtly providing their real voting preference to a stranger via this indirect phrasing of the question.  Since Antifa and other far-left groups have actively doxxed and attacked Trump-supporters, it makes sense that these voters would hesitate to answer the straightforward "whom are you voting for" question truthfully.

It is astounding that this poll did not receive attention from pro-Trump conservative media.  And now that the president has tested positive for the coronavirus and is being treated at Walter Reed Hospital, the data may have changed somewhat.  Even so, a 16-point gap in Trump's favor as to voters' feelings about the election result is significant and worthy of discussion.  If this polling question accurately reflects the electorate's mood, then the Biden campaign should be concerned.

The lack of enthusiasm for the Biden/Harris ticket could lower Democrat voter participation in the election, either by mail or in person.  With the mainstream media relentlessly telling us Biden has opened a wide lead and that the outcome is essentially "in the bag" for Biden, that enthusiasm gap could further negatively affect Democrat participation, just as it did in 2016.  After all, many Democrat voters were told continuously that Hillary Clinton had a 90% chance of winning.  Why even bother to vote?  She's got this...

It's quite possible that pundits and commentators are missing the stealth Trump vote.  Will Gallup ask who voters think will win the presidential race again before Election Day?  If so, it will be interesting to see how those numbers change.  The media may have dropped the ball on electoral prognostication...again.

Michael A. Bertolone, M.S. is a freelance writer in Rochester, N.Y.  Read his other American Thinker pieces here.

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