With less than 24 hours to go before Election Day, everyone is turning their eyes toward opinion polls and the pollsters who run them.

As we have all been seeing for a while now, the polls are trending by the smallest of margins in the swing states toward Donald Trump.

Two days out, President Trump’s chances to win from…

Nate Silver: 52.6%
FiveThirtyEight: 53%
DecisionDeskHQ: 54%
The Economist: 51%

VOTE, VOTE, VOTE! pic.twitter.com/SJsSE0iZzd

— Jake Schneider (@jacobkschneider) November 4, 2024

But there were two major polls that caused some consternation and uproar over the weekend, and now, with Tuesday fast approaching, do these polls actually mean anything? The first poll that blew people’s minds was one that came from Ann Selzer, who claims that abortion has pushed Kamala Harris ahead of Donald Trump in… Iowa??

The Iowa pollster who surprised pundits and politicians alike over the weekend with a poll showing Kamala Harris leading Donald Trump in the state said the poll was indicative of a modern reality: abortion has rallied Democrats.

J. Ann Selzer, whose pre-election polls have long predicted the eventual result in Iowa, said on MSNBC‘s The Weekend that she didn’t have “as much data as we might like about why this is happening,” referring to the Des Moines Register poll that showed Harris leading Trump by 3 percentage points. However, she said, the data was consistent with the reporting the paper’s political reporters pursued throughout the election.

“Our consensus from the reporters who work this beat is that the abortion ban went into effect this past summer,” Selzer said, according to the Daily Mail. “I think it has gotten people interested in voting.”

It would truly be a shock if Iowa, which currently has all four House seats held by Republicans, plus a Republican governor, went for Kamala Harris. In her poll, Selzer has two of those seats being Democrat blowouts – something which no other poll has predicted. Considering Iowa historically, it would be an absolute outlier to have Kamala take the state – and the fact that the state is not well polled because it IS historically so “red” makes the Selzer poll seem odd. Also odd – Selzer herself doesn’t seem to know how to read the data. When she was being interviewed by Mark Halperin, Selzer did not exactly come off as a data guru.

Political genius Ann Selzer appears confused over what the “R” and “D” letters refer to in polling cross tabs pic.twitter.com/R7iADsusbT

— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) November 3, 2024

Now, are senior women in Iowa driving these results? Selzer’s poll has a margin of error of 3.4% – which would put Iowa in a dead heat, in a state which Trump won in 2020 by 8.2%. Selzer will either look like a genius or a fool come Tuesday, and the honest truth is, no one knows which it will be.

The other outlier poll that grabbed attention was coming out of New Hampshire. Now, this state has moved into the “toss-up” column according to Real Clear politics, but Kamala Harris is still leading in the aggregate polls by 3.5%. However, New Hampshire is also in the midst of a gubernatorial election, where former Republican senator Kelly Ayotte is holding a small lead over the Democrat candidate. Donald Trump leading in New Hampshire, therefore, isn’t an insane impossibility.

Donald Trump is up for the first time in a New Hampshire poll, moving the state into toss-up territory.

We sent reporter @KassyAkiva to investigate. Here’s what voters said: pic.twitter.com/axlcnnOjCC

— Daily Wire (@realDailyWire) November 3, 2024

Several voters said they doubted the poll, conducted by the New Hampshire Journal and Praecones Analytica, which showed Trump taking a lead of 50.2 percent to Harris’s 49.8 percent.

“You have got to look at who puts out the polls,” George said. “They are so skewed.”

George added that he thinks Harris will “definitely win” in New Hampshire.

A Republican presidential candidate has not won New Hampshire in a general election since 2000. Hillary Clinton won the state by 0.3 points in 2016 and President Joe Biden won the state by 7.2 points in 2020, according to Newsweek. Most New Hampshire polls show Harris ahead by more than five points.

The reason that these polls are grabbing so much attention is because they are bucking the current trends – which is calling this race a dead heat. However, Nate Silver, who IS a data guru, is pointing at another problem, which he calls “herding.”

The FiveThirtyEight founder said irresponsible pollsters were “herding” their numbers, or using past results to affect current ones, to keep Vice President Harris and former President Trump within a point or two of each other each time.

“I kind of trust pollsters less,” Silver said on his podcast, name-checking Emerson College. “They all, every time a pollster [says] ‘Oh, every state is just plus-one, every single state’s a tie,’ no! You’re f–king herding! You’re cheating! You’re cheating!” he fumed.

“Your numbers aren’t all going to come out at exactly one-point leads when you’re sampling 800 people over dozens of surveys,” Silver vented.

“You are lying! You’re putting your f–king finger on the scale!’”

Silver’s own vaunted model puts Trump ahead of Harris, 55% to 45%, as voters prepare to head to the polls in just three days.

His scorn also extended to “all these GOP-leaning firms” showing the former president narrowly ahead each time to project that they’re “not going out too far on a limb.”

“If a pollster never publishes any numbers that surprises you, then it has no value,” he said.

Silver blasted most other pollsters except for the New York Times, saying the rest were “just f–king punting on this election for the most part.”

Nate Silver to pollsters: “You’re f*cking herding. You’re cheating … Your numbers aren’t all going to come out at exactly one-point leads when you’re sampling 800 people over dozens of surveys. You are lying. You’re putting your f*cking finger on the scale." pic.twitter.com/kowED2GiBd

— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) October 31, 2024

Now, Silver himself says that at this point, he considers the race “a pure toss-up.” Which, because of the “herding” that may be happening, is the only result that other pollsters can safely say at this moment as well.

We have seen polls lie to us before. We saw it in 2016, when Hillary Clinton was predicted to win – and she didn’t. We’ve seen it more recently in 2022, when a “red wave” was supposed to come – and it started and stopped in Florida. It’s clear that the pollsters either can’t tell or don’t want to know what is coming, which leaves us all unable to make an educated guess beyond, perhaps, our own inner circles. In just a few days, with results in hand, the pattern that led to those results will be clear. As of right now, though, the tea leaves are just giant clumps in the bottom of the cup, and no one can figure them out.

If the polls are essentially meaningless exercises in data collection at this point, and the public is burned out on campaign ads and text messages and solicitations from candidates and parties, then, like always, this election comes down to turnout. Who is more motivated to vote? Republicans have definitely improved in early voting, but will that affect Election Day voting? We just don’t know.

So, have YOU voted yet? Or are you waiting until tomorrow? Either way, make sure you get it done, dear readers.

Featured image: composite of Donald Trump (Gage Skidmore Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license) and Kamala Harris (Public Domain via White House)