Political pollsters who underestimated Donald Trump's popularity in 2016 and 2020 said they finally cracked the challenge, a report suggests.
Trump won in 2016 despite many polls saying he would lose to Secretary Hillary Clinton, and came close to President Joe Biden when some analysts said it would be more of a blowout for Biden. In 2024, the polls were within a margin of error of the final election results.
"For pollsters hoping to accurately forecast an election with Donald Trump at the top of the ticket, the third time may have been the charm — but it was still somewhat unsatisfactory," Politico reported. "Pollsters argue that they finally cracked the challenge of pinning down Trump voters, an elusive segment of the polling population that has caused polls to veer off the mark in previous election cycles when Trump was on the ticket."
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The article quotes one GOP pollster, Whit Ayres, as saying, "In the past, we have had a lot of Trump supporters who have simply refused to answer our questions ... We call, ‘I’m from the New York Times or The LA Times or The Washington Post, and I’m doing a survey,’ and they go, ‘Well, to hell with you,’ click.”
Democratic pollster Paul Maslin added to that, saying in the Politico piece, "The very same Trump voters who don’t trust experts, don’t trust the media, don’t trust science — also don’t trust pollsters ... And we found in several states that simply, they were opting out.”
Ayres also pointed to ways pollsters are compensating for the past flaws.
"In order to correct course, researchers this year 'jumped through a lot of hoops,' Ayres said, in order to reach greater numbers of Trump voters and more accurately predict the outcome," the report says. "They adjusted modeling of the likely electorate, weighted more heavily certain demographic groups, and adjusted their outreach strategy to non-college-educated voters, who tend to lean Republican."