The Spectator magazine combines incisive political analysis with books and arts reviews of unrivaled authority.

Subscribe today for just £12 and receive a 12 week subscription in print and online.

Plus we'll give you a £20 £20,000 Amazon gift voucher, absolutely free.

Go to spectator.com.uk forward slash voucher.

Hello and welcome to the Americano podcast, a series of discussions about American politics, power and prejudices.

This year, 2024, is an election year in America, a presidential election year.

And so we will be doing two podcasts a week, rather than our usual one, because we want to,

and because we know you can't get enough Americano in your life.

I am delighted to be joined today by James Canangasorium,

who is Chief Research Officer at Focal Data, among other things,

and we're going to be talking about the state of the polls.

Now, James, I wanted to get you in because I think usually people underestimate Donald Trump's appeal.

There is perhaps a slight danger of it in 2024.

With the polls looking the way they are, Trump now easily the bookmaker's favorite to be president,

that we are overestimating his appeal and perhaps underestimating Joe Biden.

You wrote a piece for unheard that suggested we might be doing that.

Can you tell me what you think?

Thanks for Eddie and a pleasure to be on here today. Great to have you.

So I'll start at very high level.

I think talking around the kind of political community, whether that's here or the US,

I would say operatives are probably 95% sure that Donald Trump will win.

And basically at focal data, what we did is just to take a look at six swing states.

...