Jonathan Draeger, reporter for RealClearPolitics, wrote Tuesday that "the 2024 presidential contest couldn't be tighter." Unless, of course, it turns out not to be nearly as close as this season's run of polls suggests it is.

One indication that it might not be was a New York Times-Siena poll released this week showing Donald Trump leading Kamala Harris in Florida 55% to 41%. That's quite a switch from the 48.85% to 48.84% by which George W. Bush carried the state in 2000, or the 48.6% to 47.4% there for Trump over Hillary Clinton in 2016.

As the Times' brilliant and painstaking poll analyst Nate Cohn wrote, this result could just turn out to be an outlier: Polling theory says one in 20 polls is outside the margin of error. Or it could represent a continuation of the 2022 off-year results, which showed Republicans doing much better in Florida than in the current target states, such as Pennsylvania and Michigan.

But it could also have resulted, he explained, from population change. According to Census Bureau estimates, Florida's population grew by 4.7% between July 2020 and July 2023 (the latest available), a greater percentage increase than any other state except much less populous Idaho. That's a population increase of more than 1 million people in just three years, with many newcomers perhaps attracted by Florida's famously less restrictive COVID-19 policies.

As Cohn noted, many other polls may miss the effects of inter-election demographic changes by weighting results according to respondents' recollections of previous votes. Since voters historically have overreported supporting........

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