If there's one question I've received more than any other in this election, it's, "what's going on with the polls?"

Some say Hillary Clinton is going to win in the biggest landslide since Reagan in 1984; others say she has a slight lead similar to Obama's in 2012, while a few say that Trump will win by a squeaker similar to George W. Bush in 2000.

Here's my best examination of the state of the race, polls, and early voting.

The best indicator of election turnout is excitement levels, registration levels, and previous results. These were the election results in the last four presidential races by party:

2012 2008 2004 2000 Democrat 38% 39% 37% 39% Republican 32% 32% 37% 35% Independent 29% 29% 26% 26%

They have been very similar in all of the elections, Democrats have been between 37 to 39 percent, 32 to 37 for Republicans, and 26 to 29 for Independents.

Given the increase in registration for people not affiliated with either major party it's possible that Independents hit 30 percent, but nonetheless, it's unlikely that they surpass Republicans and it's possible that the GOP will have a higher turnout than 2012 and 2008.

With those being the likely numbers, here's are some turnout models given by polling companies:

On average, the polling companies predict Republicans will have their all time lowest turnout, Democrats will be about where they were in 2012, and Independents will break historical records.

Polls that use self-reporting to determine if someone is a likely voter can typically swing the results in Clinton's favor vs. polls with people who have a high history of turning out on election day. The New York Times did a great story a while back showing why some polls can vary so much.

Many of the polls above use the self-reporting method to determine if someone will or won't vote.

Early voting can also shed some light on where the state of the election is. Michael McDonald of the University of Florida has been tracking early voting in all the states and has found that Democratic turnout has been lagging in Iowa and Ohio while Republicans aren't where they were in Nevada and North Carolina. Florida has seen an increase in both party's votes with the GOP having a slight edge.

These movements on the ground can be even better indicators than polls. For better or worse, polls can be useful, but they have a history of being off by a significant margin especially in the last few years.



Overseas polls were far off in both; Israeli legislative polls were off by 10 points against the conservative Likud Party.

Most polls on Brexit right before the election were off between 5 and 13 percent of the Leave campaign.

In the Michigan Democratic primary, the polls said that Clinton would win by about 20 points, they were so far off that Nate Silver stated that she had a greater than 99 percent chance of winning the state, she lost by 1.5 percent. Similarly, the FiveThirtyEight elections expert said that Trump would win the Iowa Caucus, Sen. Ted Cruz defeated him.

The U.S. Senate election in Virginia was another swing-and-a-miss for pollsters, Republican Ed Gillespie was supposed to lose by up to 20 points to incumbent Senator Mark Warner. He lost less than a single percent.

Point being that polls aren't always wrong, they aren't always right, and a lot of them are junk. The election doesn't seem to show that Clinton is on her way to Lyndon Johnson style landslide, but if Trump wants to deliver a surprise and save the Senate, Republicans need to pick up the pace of early voting and excitement levels.

Remember polls and lawn signs don't vote, people do.