The public seems to have an insatiable appetite for them, even if they often turn out to be spectacularly wrong (so sorry, Mrs. Rodham Clinton). People are still drawn to them because they’re really one of our few windows into what’s happening and what’s likely to go down in November. The stakes are so high that it’s hard not to pay at least a little attention to them.

Often, however, you’ll come across articles that mention “internal polling,” and it’s usually talked about in hushed tones as if they deliver some sort of mystical insight that the rest of the world outside the campaign is not allowed to be privy to. Often they’re used to explain the behavior of the candidates.

Here, internal surveys are reportedly giving Trump confidence:

While here, it is alleged that Kamala Harris’ strategy dramatically changed due to negative internals:

I thought to myself the other day while reading one of these articles: what exactly is it? And why would the results be significantly different than the 10,000 polls that are seemingly dropped every day?

FiveThirtyEight founder and election prognosticator Nate Silver explains in a Substack article Thursday.

So as long as I’ve been covering politics, people have been fascinated by internal polls (surveys that the campaigns themselves or closely affiliated partisan groups conduct). Especially given the high-profile public polling misses in recent years, surely the campaigns know the real story of the race?

Well, no. Or at least, not necessarily. If you really knew what the campaigns knew, that would probably provide valuable information. But unless you’re an Iranian or Russian hacker, you probably don’t. Instead, you know what the campaigns want you to know.

Why are they different than the polls we read about in the newspaper?

Suppose that you’ve bugged both the Harris and Trump campaign HQs. You know every internal poll they’ve conducted all campaign long. How much of an advantage would this provide you versus public polling averages?

Probably some. Campaigns have access to proprietary information that public pollsters lack, like data mining they’ve done based on campaign contacts. And in general, the money in the polling industry is in the campaign side of the business, so they may be getting a higher grade of pollster talent. But there are also reasons to be wary. Sometimes the campaigns are just fooling themselves.

One issue is that campaigns have different incentives for conducting election polls than media or nonpartisan organizations. Rather than seeking to predict the outcome, they’re trying to make strategic decisions, usually about where to allocate resources or how to adopt more effective messaging.

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You can tell Silver likes the subject, and he delivers a lengthy discussion of all things internal polling. It’s worth a read, but here are some main points: often the internal polling is conducted by people who believe in the candidate, so they can inadvertently bias their surveys and also keep bad news away from the boss. Internals had it wrong for Mitt Romney’s 2012 campaign for instance and overestimated his support by almost five points. In addition, when you find yourself reading a story about a campaign’s internals, it’s likely that the information was leaked by one side trying to get an edge. If a team’s internals are terrible, they’ll generally try to bury the results and you'll never see them (unless somehow the other side gets ahold of them).

Leah Askarinam, formerly a politics writer for 538 but now an Associated Press reporter, wrote a piece in February called “In defense of internal polling.” She writes:

Internal polls are the middle children of the world of elections analysis: often ignored, desperate for attention and chronically misunderstood. But, also like middle children, internal polls are keen observers of their surroundings…

It's that kind of [political] agenda that makes some political observers cast aside internal polling. But while it's perilous to read internal polls the same way as nonpartisan polls, they are important to the political analyst tool box.

She added that internal pollsters are personally committed to the outcome because their careers could very well depend on their accuracy:

Nathan Gonzales, publisher of Inside Elections and my former editor, often says that pollsters who are commissioned to conduct internal polling have more "skin in the game." That's because accurate polling can mean the difference between winning or losing a campaign — and therefore, winning or losing potential clients. 

While they might not be a magical crystal ball, Askarinam says they’re still worthwhile:

As long as political analysts read internal polls for what they are — polls conducted by reputable firms but released by parties with an agenda — they're just another source of information to consider about an election. "I think a healthy look at a race includes partisan and nonpartisan polling, public and private polling," Gonzales said. "I'd rather see more data than less data in order to try to identify trends and outliers."

So there you have it, Internal Polling 101. The takeaway? For political junkies like myself, it’s more numbers and information to ponder. In the end, though, it’s all just numbers, and none of them really make a difference except for the final poll on November 5. Until then, I can calm my sense of unease by watching Trump slowly but surely gain momentum. If I were to take an internal poll of myself, the result would show that I’m profoundly disturbed by the thought of a Harris-Walz administration. 

All of us need to go vote and make sure that doesn’t happen. Then we can go back to ignoring all these damn polls.