For pollsters covering the presidential election, it’s time to start over. For the third consecutive election, the industry underestimated Donald Trump’s support, despite being closer to the outcome this time.
Politico notes that results about Trump’s alleged drop in support among Black voters in Georgia and North Carolina, as well as Vice President Kamala Harris’ purported lead in Iowa, mislead the country.
It “did not match what the Iowa electorate ultimately decided in the voting booth,” according to a statement issued by J. Ann Selzer, who released her survey over the weekend.
“I’ll be reviewing data from multiple sources with hopes of learning why that happened.”
After the 2016 and 2020 elections, pollsters adjusted their techniques in an attempt to determine Trump’s level of support. After Trump’s initial campaign, they recognized that they had overlooked people with lower levels of education.
To address this, many made adjustments, some of which were dependent on the respondent’s previous election vote. Politico says that helped a little but not enough.
For instance, the race was deadlocked in Georgia, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania, all of which were won by Trump, according to the most recent New York Times/Sienna College poll. In any case, experts argue the modification based on previous votes is merely a workaround.
“Brute Force Correction”
“It’s a brute-force correction,” one pollster says, when “what we really wanted to do is correct for those non-responders that are Trump voters that otherwise wouldn’t participate in anything.”
Deceptive polling has a price. According to the Guardian, the Iowa candidate blamed Harris’ ascent on his ire over abortion restrictions and gave Democrats hope that the new support would help the Democrat win Michigan and Wisconsin.
A historian wrote on X, “Polling is a very compromised enterprise,” following Tuesday night’s call for Trump in Iowa.
Rick Perlstein wrote, “It would be great to see people start ignoring it,” Comedian Jon Stewart rudely implied to pollsters on the Daily Show that he is not in a rush for them to make their next changes. “I don’t ever want to ever f***ing hear from you again,” he replied.