JD Vance: Don’t Trust The Polls

 Sen. JD Vance (R-OH), the 2024 Republican vice presidential nominee, discouraged people from trusting the polls — even when they favor his cause — and suggested betting markets have been a better gauge.

Less than two weeks out from Election Day, Vice President Kamala Harris has a slight edge in national polls and a small disadvantage in battleground state polls, while many betting markets show former President Donald Trump and Vance with more than a 10-point advantage.

Vance recently sat down for an interview with podcaster Theo Von, who explained his view that people betting money is a “good tracker in a capitalistic society” and pressed the VP candidate on his faith in the polls, noting how they have missed dating back to 2016.

“You shouldn’t trust polls, whether they’re good for us or bad for us,” Vance said. “And here’s the reason you shouldn’t trust polls: … About 10 years ago, every 10th person you called to do a poll would answer. Now it’s about 1-in-30 people, okay?” he said.

Vance said “another important thing” concerns how Democrats, “especially if you’re a higher-education-level Democrat,” are far more willing to answer pollster questions whereas “if you’re like my family, if somebody called them — a stranger — and said, ‘Who are you going to vote for?,’ they would say, ‘F you,’ and hang up the phone.”

 

Although pollsters weigh their results to try and account for underrepresented groups, Vance emphasized that he believes it is “very hard to get an accurate sample to give you any sense of what is going on” with Harris supporters being more responsive to pollsters than Trump backers.

Vance explained that he witnessed how the polls could be off-target during the U.S. Senate race he won in 2022.

“There were all these public polls that said … the race was tied or maybe we’d even lose by a few points and the pollster that I had who just polled for my campaign — he’s actually Trump’s pollster, too, and very smart guy — and he said, ‘Look, the reason these polls are wrong is because they’re not reaching voters who don’t like to answer polls and those voters are going heavily for you.’ So I said, ‘Okay, well how much are we going to win by?’ And he said, ‘You’re going to win by 6 points.’ And we won by 7 points, right? So he was much more accurate than the public pollers,” Vance said.

Vance posited that public polls that get published in a newspaper article might cost between $10,000 and $20,000, when it would really require between $60,000 and $70,000 to get an accurate sample with “thousands and thousands” of people being called for the survey.

Referring to a betting market chart that Von had displayed, one from Kalshi that showed Trump with a 57%-43% lead over Harris in the 2024 presidential election, Vance said, “Honestly, yeah, I think that chart’s about right. I think that we’ve probably got about a 60% chance of winning.”

In summing up his view, Vance said “don’t buy” the polls, even if they are showing a win for him and Trump because it might dissuade people from voting and something might happen after which Harris supporters may not want to answer pollster questions.

“So you just can’t trust this stuff,” Vance said. “You’ve got to assume that you just got to work your ass off. That’s what we’re trying to do. You know, President Trump and I are doing multiple events a day at this point, and if you want — in my view — if you want to secure the border, have common sense economic policy, then Donald Trump is your man.”