If you looked at the final FiveThirtyEight polling averages before the election and the results we currently have, there were some big misses at the state level, where it really matters: Wisconsin was off by 7.6 points; Ohio by 7.5 points, Iowa by 6.8 points, Florida by 5.9 points, and Michigan by 5.5 points. Everyone of them underestimating the Trump vote. In 2016, there were a lot of similar numbers.
But have polls only missed the mark in the last two elections? In 2012, polling averages were actually more wrong than 2016 and 2020—Obama won by a wider margin than polls predicted—but since the expected outcome came to pass, nobody talked much about it.
Even in 2004, exit polls showed John Kerry would win a huge victory over George W. Bush. But the exit polls missed how well Bush did in early voting, and Bush won.
And when the polls are off, it’s always worse when the media hypes the numbers. We’ve seen from the last two elections, the effect is it not only erodes confidence in the polling industry, but possibly even the electoral process. Throughout the campaign, Trump voters repeatedly said they didn’t believe the polls and they were right—which is probably adding to feelings of distrust over the election night outcome, too.
Tonight we’re joined by pollster Richard Baris, director of Big Data Poll, to discuss how to make sense of all this and what the future holds for the polling industry.
