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Polls show Harris and Trump in a dead heat. Why is Arizona is notoriously hard to poll?

Man in studio
Ian McKinney/KJZZ
Paul Bentz in the KJZZ studio in 2023.

Election Day is just weeks away and all eyes are on the polls.

Watching the horse race gets a lot of flack, but The Show took the time to delve into Arizona polls. Not just the numbers — who’s up and who’s down — but what it all means in an all-important swing state. And why Arizona is notoriously hard to poll.

Paul Bentz, a pollster with High Ground, says Arizona’s a dead heat right now — with Trump showing a slight lead. But, it’s the consistency in those polls that really matters.

Conversation highlights

PAUL BENTZ: When you look at a poll, what we're looking for was when lines cross. If lines don't ever cross — margins get larger and smaller, whoever's in the lead if they are up by one one day and up by two the next day — if they continue to be up, that's the big thing that we're looking for is within a trend. What I look for more in the presidential race is, because it has been sort of back and forth, is I'm looking at key demographics. I'm looking at particular audiences that are going to be really important.

And a couple of them that we're watching really closely is, first of all, crossover Republicans. In the last cycle in — 2022 and in 2020 — we saw there is a portion of Republicans who chose to not go with the MAGA candidates, not go with Trump and go, and vote for the Democrat. And we remain a red state. But if Republicans are losing that advantage because they've got this crossover vote, that's a problem. We saw Kari Lake tell McCain Republicans to get out. And I think some of them took that personally.

And so right now, in most of the data, what we're seeing is 90+% of Democrats solidified behind Harris. But the Republicans, it's somewhere closer to 80 or 85% with — in our latest survey, for example, we had about 12 points worth of Republicans going towards the Democrat compared to only 2% of Democrats going for the Republican. Usually it's much closer. So that's one key demographic.

Another one we're looking at is independent and unaffiliated voters. The folks that are not of the two parties. What we see is Trump is actually winning that audience right now by a narrow margin. Something that we have not seen in 2020 — we actually saw Trump lose the independence and he won them in 2016. So if he's winning those, that's why he's starting to trend in the right direction that I'm seeing a lot of concentrated communications to independents about immigration issues, about other sort of social and cultural issues. And it seems to be working.

The last group is 65 and older. Our senior population. Arizona's a retirement destination. It generally used to be a very heavily Republican stronghold among seniors. In fact, what we're seeing, those Democrats are making inroads among 65 and older, and making it much more competitive. And so that's a built-in traditional advantage for Republicans that they seem to be starting to lose a little bit in this upcoming year.

We've heard that Arizona is kind of hard to poll. Why is that?

BENTZ: Well, it's very difficult to poll. Because as I mentioned, we have a significant senior population and they vote no matter what. It comes down to who's going to show up around them. We have a large number of younger voters. We have a large number of Latino voters. We have a lot of large number of independent voters, all three of those audiences — independents, younger voters, Latinos — tend to under participate if they're not motivated to turn out. And so what we're seeing is it's really hard to gauge how enthusiastic they are. Left to its own devices, seniors are going to vote and that generally benefits Republicans. But as the other audiences, if they get engaged and show up, as turnout gets higher, it tends to benefit the Democrats.

Do we have any sense going into November whether or not those key groups will actually turn out?

BENTZ: Well, that's the million-dollar question, isn't it? I mean, that's what we're watching right now. I think younger voters have been much more enthused with Biden dropping out Harris in the race. Younger voters were not very enthusiastic about two septuagenarians going head to head. And so in that case, I think the younger voters are a little bit more engaged. I think the abortion issue helps with that.

But at the same time, I think the Republicans immigration issue that they placed on the ballot, [Proposition] 314, is mitigating some of that. Because you're seeing increased enthusiasm around immigration issues, which seems to be motivating some of these independent voters.

Arizona is always interesting to watch because in between elections, we'll have more register independent voters than we will of either party. That changes heading into an election. Usually it changes pretty dramatically, especially on the Republican side, heading into this presidential preference election, right

BENTZ: It did, and left to its own devices, independent voters are the fastest growing group in the state. People default, particularly younger voters, in choosing to not be of one of the two parties. So when all things are equal, generally independent voters rise pretty significantly and are the largest group in the state. But what we see is things like the presidential preference election motivates people to register as a Republican or a Democrat to participate in those. Independents can vote in our other elections, but they cannot vote in a presidential preference election. We saw — that's one of the upticks.

I think the other thing is that we are seeing paid Republican efforts to register people as Republicans. And it seems to be working. Yhis is probably the highest gap we've seen in a while where Republicans are having an advantage over the other parties. They already over participate. We're anticipating a plus-four Republican advantage. Generally, Republicans are the biggest party when it comes to voting. But in this case with the registration advantage, it may build in even a slightly higher advantage for them.

Because you saw a lot of crossover voters last time around. Are we going to see as many this time around based on the polling you mentioned?

BENTZ: I think we are, and they're coming from some general areas — mostly in Maricopa County. These folks will generally they are red voters. You look down the ballot as they get lower, they'll go back to voting for Republicans, but at the top of the ticket, they seem to have struggled in supporting MAGA candidates. Now, what's interesting though is Trump does not fall into that category. Trump has this unique unicorn that gets his own audience that's able to create and capture votes that his acolytes, the people who support him and follow him, cannot seem to get. The Senate race versus the president's race is a great example.

The presidential race is within the margin of error, maybe with Trump with a slight narrow le the Senate race here. We've got Ruben Gallego with a sizable lead over Kari Lake. And the difference is Kari Lake is not getting that 85% of Republicans. She's getting closer to 80%. And then she's losing the independent voters as well, and she's losing among 65 and older. She's just got challenges everywhere. So there's this elusive Trump-Gallego voter that is out there and is likely to vote in this upcoming election.

KJZZ's The Show transcripts are created on deadline. This text is edited for length and clarity, and may not be in its final form. The authoritative record of KJZZ's programming is the audio record.

Lauren Gilger, host of KJZZ's The Show, is an award-winning journalist whose work has impacted communities large and small, exposing injustices and giving a voice to the voiceless and marginalized.
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