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What Does It Mean When Trafalgar Says Shapiro Is Leading By 9%?

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On Thursday (October 13), the Trafalgar Group released the results of a poll that showed Josh Shapiro leading Doug Mastriano (52.8% – 43.5%) in the race for Governor of Pennsylvania. The results of an earlier Trafalgar Poll, released on Sept 16, showed Shapiro with a much smaller lead (47.4% – 45.4%). 

On his Facebook page, Mastriano cited the Trafalgar Poll in August, when he was trailing Shapiro by 4%. Mastriano also cited Trafalgar four times during primary. 

More recently, his supporters often pointed to Trafalgar as other pollsters began showing Shapiro with double-digit leads over Mastriano. 

So what’s the story with Trafalgar – are they any good?

Actually, they’re pretty good pollsters – keeping in mind that political polling is almost never precise.

Trafalgar Spreadsheet

Click above to expand

Since 2018, in 25 statewide elections, they picked the winner 16 times – 64%.

When they miss, they almost always miss in favor of Republican candidates. They underestimated the vote for the GOP candidate in only six of the 25 races. In the nine races where they missed, in only one of them did they predict that the Democrat would win, when in fact, the Republican won. On average, their predictions turned out to be 2.1% more favorable for Republicans than they turned out to be.

Trafalgar’s worst miss was in the 2018 Georgia Gubernatorial race, a race in which they actually picked the winner. However, Trafalgar had predicted that Republican Brian Kemp would beat Stacy Abrams by  12.3%. Kemp’s actual margin of victory was only 1.4%.

So what does it means is that if Mastriano wins?

It means that Trafalgar will have joined other respected pollsters such as USA Today, Emerson, Fox News, Marist and CBS News in one of the most colossal polling failures in history.