One of the political sites I frequent that keeps track of polling data has a phrase they repeat often “in politics, a week of a long time.” It means that a week from now, some scandal or major local/national/world event could occur and the polls from now could be useless.

And if a week is a long time, then 11 months before the election is forever. You might as well poll for DeSantis vs Newsom in 2028. It would be just about as accurate.

By November, there are a lot of factors that could change which could alter the polling figures/voting results. Maybe Trump is convicted. That could drive people away from him or it could strengthen the right as they flock to him to “save” their leader. Maybe once Biden is the official nominee (as opposed to virtually the only candidate officially recognized by the party), Democrats will flock back to him or maybe people will follow through on their threats and refuse to vote in 2024. Maybe in 11 months, Biden will be boosted by a booming economy or maybe something will happen to cause a crash that pulls his numbers down. Maybe the situations in Israel, Ukraine, the border, etc will change to boost or hurt Biden’s numbers.

And this is just stuff we know about now. For all we know, the headlines in October of 2024 could be about some major event that we have no clue about now. For example, the headlines in December 2019 were not about a global pandemic. If I was typing this in December 2019, “Trump will be hurt by his response to a global pandemic that shuts down nearly everything” would not have been in my listings."

If Biden is down in the polls in September or October, I’ll worry, but I’m not going to worry about polls in December 2023.