Pollsters seemed to finally get it right in 2024. After years of bad misses, they said the presidential election would be close, and it was.In fact, the industry did not solve its problems last year. In 2016, pollsters famously underestimated Donald Trump by about 3.2 points on average. In 2024, after eight years of introspection, they underestimated Trump by … 2.9 points. Many of the most accurate pollsters last year were partisan Republican outfits; many of the least accurate were rigorous university polls run by political scientists.Polls can’t be perfect; after all, they come with a margin of error. But they should not be missing in the same direction over and over. And chances are the problem extends beyond election polling to opinion surveys more generally. When Trump dismisses his low approval ratings as “fake polls,” he might just have a point.For years, the media have been covering the travails… ...[TheTopNews] Read More.
2 weeks ago
