How reliable is election polling?
In the 2016 presidential race, Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton was predicted to beat the Republican nominee Donald Trump in a landslide. Who can ever forget the images of Clinton supporters reduced to tears on election night, desperately leaning on each other for support as exit polls kept coming in showing that she was losing?
Again, in 2020, the presidential election polls proved to be greatly exaggerated in favor of Democratic nominee Joe Biden. The results of that election will likely be debated for decades.
Is it happening again?
On Tuesday, Elon Musk posted on X the results of what he called “a super unscientific poll,” asking respondents to choose between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump. Nearly 6 million X users voted — much more than in a typical election poll. The results? 73.2% chose Trump and 26.8% chose Harris.
Politico reports on the worry among Democratic Party pollsters over how accurate current polling numbers are. Here’s the start of the story:
CHICAGO — The Democratic Party’s pollsters have spent the past three and a half years preparing for the next 75 days.
The last presidential election was an “Oh, sh*t” moment for them: Joe Biden beat Donald Trump by a closer margin than a lot of the polling suggested, and Democrats were projected to expand their House majority but instead saw it shrink.
It prompted five of the party’s top polling firms — who typically compete for business — to collaborate on an autopsy aimed at fixing what went wrong.
So now that Kamala Harris has caught Trump in the polls in her first month as a candidate, it’s left Democrats wondering: How real is her surge?
Here at the Democratic convention this week, some in the party’s professional class are trying to tamp down the exuberance. Officials with the top pro-Harris super PAC said their polling “is much less rosy” than public surveys. Other Democratic pollsters noted that — even if their polling is right — Trump still maintains a lot of advantages.
“It’s still a very tough race, and that feels consistent with everything we know,” said Margie Omero, a partner at the Democratic polling firm GBAO Strategies.