Donald Trump’s meme stock racked up double-digit gains on the final day before the election, dismissing a shock weekend poll predicting a groundswell of support among women for opponent Kamala Harris.
Shares in Trump Media and Technology Group, whose multi-billion dollar valuation often reflects the odds of the ex-President returning to the White House, jumped 12% during Monday’s trading session, closing at $34.34 each.
Its price has more than doubled over the past 30-odd days amid growing market confidence in an impending Trump victory this week.
However, the latest gains didn’t seem to lift his spirits.
Potentially worrying data published this weekend by resident Des Moines Register pollster Ann Selzer suggests female voters may be flocking to Harris in large numbers even in the nation’s rural heartlands home to Trump’s conservative base.
“I got a poll I’m ten points up in Iowa, one of my enemies just puts out a poll, I’m three down,” he told a rally. “Why do they announce a poll that’s highly skewed towards Democrats and liberals.”
‘No upside’ to manipulating poll data
Using words like “enemy” to describe a respected opinion pollster like Selzer is symptomatic of the incendiary and often dehumanizing rhetoric that Trump has long been known for.
Refuting Trump’s claim, Selzer told CNN her polling methodology had not changed one bit since the time her surveys in 2016 and 2020 pointed to Trump leading in the state.
“We did nothing to make that happen. I’m a big believer in keeping my dirty fingers off the data,” she said on Monday, adding there was “no upside” to manipulating her poll data to give an advantage to Harris.
In the dying days of the race, Trump’s campaign may have suffered an unforced error following a mass rally at Madison Square Garden that alienated Puerto Ricans and Hispanics more generally following offensive remarks by a comedian invited to address the crowd.
Trump, who quickly disavowed the individual, sought to compensate for controversy by taking the stage in Pittsburgh on Monday with the son of Puerto Rican baseball legend Roberto Clemente, in the city where his late father once played for the Pirates.
The former president also received a late yet important boost from comedian Joe Rogan, the world’s best-paid podcaster. Rogan waited until the eve of the election to officially endorse Trump.
Nonetheless it’s clear Selzer’s poll for the Des Moines Register represents some cause for concern that females—which turn out to vote more frequently than their male counterparts—may quietly be abandoning Trump.
How to account for the emergence of the shy voter
Many women have become concerned following several high-profile cases of pregnant women dying after being refused healthcare as a direct result of the landmark Dobbs ruling in 2022.
Trump has repeatedly boasted that it was all his doing since he appointed the Supreme Court justices needed to overturn Roe v. Wade.
The Selzer poll has been viewed as evidence that pollsters calling the race a dead heat have been acting out of a desire to seek safety in numbers following the shock 2016 election result that failed to spot latent support for Trump.
Selzer is known for being far less willing to account for potential distortions such as response bias.
By comparison, most of her peers often correct their data to reflect shy Trump voters.
This cohort tends not to admit to pollsters they will vote for the former president, either because they do not want to be associated with his MAGA base of January 6th supporters, or because they intrinsically do not trust pollsters’ methods.
Political pundit Rory Stewart, a former UK government minister married to an American, argued these corrections in modeling to address problems in their data meant pollsters could not be relied on to provide an accurate portrait of public opinion.
“I think their fundamental model is broken,” he said this month, citing the difficulties in gathering a broad enough range of responses now that most voters are only reachable via mobile. “It never recovered from the demise of the landline.”
The appropriately named senior election analyst for RealClear Politics, Sean Trende, had advice for voters struggling to divine the significance of Selzer’s stunning outlier amid the nonstop guessing game from polls and prediction markets.
“Toss it in the average,” he wrote on Monday. “We really don’t know what is going to happen on Tuesday.”
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