Never Trust a Consultant

David Shor, who began work on the Obama campaign and has become an often-quoted Democratic pollster, made news earlier this year when he made the following claim:

A group of political scientists at the Tufts Public Opinion Lab took a look at available data and come to a different conclusion. First, they acknowledge that the under-26 group is very hard to poll. "They’re less responsive to surveys, more mobile (frequently changing addresses), and have inconsistent turnout patterns.”

With that caveat, they examined some high-quality polling and came to a different conclusion than Shor. Here’s what they saw using the data from two high-quality surveys:

They also looked at exit polls and also found widespread youth support for Harris there, far above what Shor presented.

As you can see from those two graphs, there’s definitely a big difference between two high-quality surveys, but the key point is that those surveys showed their work. Shor doesn’t — he’s known for keeping his methodology and data under wraps.

I don’t know if Shor is pulling tricks or just got different results using reasonable methodology. But I do know that he has an agenda: he was part of the Harris campaign, and was one of the creators of the “popularism” stuff. So, in the past when I saw his name, I was skeptical. Now, I’m even more skeptical after reading the Tufts’ piece.

I got this from Jamell Bouie’s BlueSky feed:

Bouie strikes me as a pretty reasonable guy, and he is no fan of Shor.