In one universe, Kamala Harris leads only narrowly in the national popular vote against Donald J. Trump, even as she holds a discernible edge in the Northern battlegrounds. The numbers look surprisingly similar to the 2022 midterm election.
In the other, Ms. Harris has a clear lead in the national vote, but the battlegrounds are very tight. It’s essentially a repeat of the 2020 election.
This divide is almost entirely explained by whether a pollster uses “weighting on recalled vote,” which means trying to account for how voters say they voted in the last election.
I answered an unknown number recently because it was from an area code I was expecting a call. It turned out to be a pollster, at least they presented themselves as such. The first few questions seemed reasonable, but then it quickly became obvious that it was a call supporting someone running for local office pretending to be a poll. I was not going to vote for that person to begin with, but this was really disgusting.