BUFFALO, N.Y. (WBEN) The New York Governor's race appears to be closer than most anyone expected with just days to go until Election Day.
Two new polls put Rep. Lee Zeldin either slightly ahead of or slightly behind Gov. Kathy Hochul.
In a recent Emerson poll, Hochul is up by 8 points, leading Zeldin 52%-44%.
In a Trafalgar poll, Zeldin leads Hochul by one point, 46% to 45%.
"You have to be smart and you have to understand their limitations," said longtime national pollster John Zogby, who has been doing polling for nearly four decades.
"With all respect to Trafalgar, which is a good polling outfit, this season in particular, they have been leaning heavily Republican. They may very well be right. But I tend to discount them over Emerson or Siena, or earlier in the game, my poll, which had a more substantial lead for Kathy Hochul."
Zogby believes the race for governor has tightened up and that it's no longer a double digit lead. "But I believe, from a consensus of polls, that Hochul's lead is in the mid single digits."
[shortcode-inline-related expand="1" link="/wben/news/local/political-analysis-on-polling-in-new-york-governor-race" headline=""We've got a race." Political analysis on polling in New York Governor race" image="/media-library/image.jpg?id=63618646"]He said the best way to interpret polling is by watching trend lines. "Hypothetically, if Emerson has Hochul leading by 10 and Siena comes out the next day with Hochul leading by 8, and let's say Trafalgar comes out the next day and Hochul and Zeldin tied. These are three different polls with three different methodologies. Look at each poll's trend line and see if they're heading in the same direction."
Zogby also said don't expect a pollster to nail the final result. "You're still going to have a good ten percent of voters making up their mind on election day."
Many people remember the polls in the 2016 presidential election missing their mark. Zogby considers himself objective because it was the first poll in 40 years that he did not take part in. "The polls were very good that year. Key battleground states showed Hillary Clinton leading Donald Trump by 9 points, nine days before the election. We watched each day as new polls came out and her lead dissipated to the point where the day before the election she was leading by one, or behind by one. The mistake was made by pundits who didn't read the trend line. She (Clinton) was in a downward spiral."
Polling has changed since 2016. The biggest problem that Zogby sees, is that it has become socially and culturally acceptable to not answer a phone call from a pollster, or respond to an email. Secondly, he said Republicans, in general, are less likely to respond to polling questions. And third, there is the issue of cell phones. "It's very hard to get people to answer their cell phones.
And if they do, it's not as simple as, who are you voting for? we need to ask 20, 30 or 40 questions and it's very difficult to do that with cell phones," he said.
Do some people deliberately mislead a pollster by lying? Yes said Zogby. It's not a new issue. And it's not enough of a problem to skew a poll. "You're probably talking about a random sample of a thousand people. If you get 40 liars, they probably going to cancel each other out. Some are going to lie Republican and some are going to lie Democrat."
