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:
During his conversation with [Ezra] Klein, Shor shared evidence that Trump won among white men, white women, and men of color under 26, while Harris only secured majority support from women of color in this age group. “Among 18-year-olds, women of color are the only of the four that Harris won,” Shor explained, “Trump narrowly won nonwhite men,” suggesting a significant realignment among young voters that contradicts long-held assumptions about the Democratic party’s strength with young voters.
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.
