Why the polls are bunk

There are more Americans abroad than in 24 of our 50 states. Yet none of them are polled.

If you’re an American abroad, please go to VotefromAbroad.org immediately to get a ballot if you don’t already have one.

As many as 1.62 million Americans who are not in the military yet live abroad can vote in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, or Wisconsin. Yet none of them are being polled.

To wit, none of the 2.8 million voters of the 4.4 million Americans abroad officially show up in any of the never-ending polls we freebase to keep away the bad thoughts.

You can justify this kind of apathy by pointing to how low turnout has been for these voters abroad.

Only 8% of Americans abroad voted in 2020, despite the largest increase in voting ever recorded for a presidential election. But that still means we should expect around 129,600 votes from overseas in these key states, more than a third of the margin of 385,740 votes that decided these races in 2020.

In the last election, Biden won Georgia by 11,779 votes, far less than the state’s 18,475 overseas votes. His margin of victory in Arizona was 10,457 votes, and 18,435 votes came in from abroad.

The chart above is off a bit, yet it sums up everything you need to know about how close the presidential race is in the states that will swing the Electoral College.

And given how Trump’s support was generally underestimated in both 2016 and 2020 in these key states, you have every reason to be working overtime, which Donald Trump hates, to turn out every possible vote.

You may know that I recently spoke to the Michigan Team of Democrats Abroad about our Downballot for Democracy approach. Though I was presenting, I learned far more about democracy than I shared. 

The group did a fantastic job teaching me about all the work Americans do abroad to help their fellow Democrats navigate the immense hurdles to voting. They convinced me that even more effort should be put into activating this largely untapped resource of worldly Americans.

“There are tens of thousands [of American voters] right there in Windsor alone, and I think could make the difference,” said Bruce Heyman, former U.S. Ambassador to Canada.

The first-ever door-knocking canvassing is set to happen in Windsor in October. 

The five-figure number of voters in Detroit’s sister city wouldn’t have been enough to swing our state in 2020, where our margin of 154,188 more votes for Biden than Trump was more than twice as large as Trump’s edge in North Carolina. But voters abroad could easily account for our new trifecta won 2022 by the swing of just 340 votes.

The same could easily be true in a district like California’s CD-13, where Democrat Adam Gray lost by just 564 votes in the last midterm.

The polls keep telling us that this election is a coin flip. But they don’t tell us who Americans abroad are leaning toward nor how many of those voters will overcome the odds to vote.

And what polls can't ever reflect are anomalies. They can’t account for a sudden surge in turnout from voters outside the country, possibly triggered by the DNC finally investing in their turnout in a minor yet significant way, just as they don’t seem to be accounting for a change in the electorate caused by the Dobbs decision, as abortion rights remain undefeated on the ballot.

This isn’t to say that you shouldn’t trust the polls or unskew them. Don’t. Because over and over, they’re giving you crucial information: This election is entirely within the margin of effort. 

 That effort will decide the fate of democracy.

And if you don't believe overseas voters could decide this election, keep in mind that Donald Trump definitely does.