Pollsters caution against assuming that this cycle’s polls are prone to the same errors as the last, underestimating support for former President Trump. They argue that every election is different and that this year’s polls are an accurate reflection of the competitiveness of the race.

Polls now show Vice President Harris leading Trump by about 4 points, according to The Hill/Decision Desk headquarters average. But the race in the roughly half-dozen battleground states is even closer, and an election error like those in the past could mean Trump is in a stronger position to prevail than the data says.

But polling analysts say it’s not that simple.

“We don’t always see the misses in the same direction,” said Chris Jackson, senior vice president of public affairs at Ipsos. “I can tell you that the polling industry has made substantial changes to the way we conduct our surveys to try to account for what we believe is the cause of these errors in 2020. So while there will undoubtedly be mistakes in the future, they will likely be driven by different things and go in different directions.”

Pollsters have had a rough few presidential cycles in the Trump era, leading to widespread skepticism about the accuracy of their measurements, even as news story after news story details the latest poll findings.

In both 2016 and 2020, Trump was the underdog, first against Hillary Clinton and then against Joe Biden. In both cases he outperformed most of his polls.

The first time it was enough to win the Electoral College. The second time around, Biden won, but it was a very close race in a number of battleground states.

Pollsters acknowledge that Trump’s rise has posed a new challenge for the industry trying to accurately track voters’ preferences, but they say methodologies have been adjusted.

Jackson said the polling industry in 2020 and before looked at “reliable benchmarks” for sampling and weighting surveys, mostly based on census data, to ensure pollsters had a representative sample. But pollsters now realize that trends were happening that the demographics weren’t accounting for.

This led to significant adoption of other factors, such as party registration and past voting history, as additional political criteria for weighting results.

“There are a lot of different ways to do this that are currently being used in the field, but that has been a relatively widespread shift over the last four years,” Jackson said.

“I think the methodological changes are so important that we don’t necessarily have to take the 2016 and 2020 results as certain,” he added.

The problem with attendance

Turnout is a problem for pollsters when it comes to Trump.

Democratic pollster Celinda Lake noted that pollsters have tried “a number of techniques” to avoid the inaccuracies in measuring Trump’s support in key states, but calculating turnout remains difficult.

“Calculating turnout is the most difficult thing there is. And this cycle there could be a surprise Trump vote and a surprise Harris vote. Maybe you have some younger people of color who don’t look like they stand out either,” she said.

Lake said that while Democrats are gaining an edge with newly registered voters, many of whom are young women concerned about access to reproductive health care, more and more voters who are already registered and plan to vote for the first time this election votes, are in Trump’s favor.

“What we do in our polls on this date (before the elections) is that we often provide (multiple) turnout models. This is where we are. If so, this is where we stand,” she said, explaining that different election day turnout models can produce significantly different results.

Perception versus reality

Some pollsters also argued that public interpretations of the polls and forecasting models are more responsible for the perception that Trump is outperforming than the numbers themselves.

Lee Miringoff, the director of the Marist College Institute for Public Opinion, noted that the last national poll before the 2016 election was close with Clinton winning the popular vote by about 2 points. FiveThirtyEight’s average had her 4 points higher, while RealClearPolitics had her ahead by about 2 points.

The average in the key states that ultimately gave Trump victory was slightly more favorable to Clinton, but the forecast models still had her as the overwhelming favorite.

“The forecasts and polls are not necessarily separated from the various measurements that they actually are,” Miringoff said.

He also argued that state polls did not have time to capture last-minute developments in the race, such as former FBI Director James Comey’s letter reopening the investigation into Clinton’s email server in 2016.

The shy Trump voter

Experts also rejected the idea that the reason for past election problems was the “shy Trump voter,” the idea that certain voters were uncomfortable with pollsters ahead of the 2016 election. and telling 2020 that they planned to vote for Trump.

“I’ve talked to Trump voters. They don’t seem shy to me,” Jackson said.

The American Association for Public Opinion Research released a report after the 2020 election evaluating pre-election polls, which overestimated Biden’s support over Trump by an even greater margin than in 2016.

Jackson, who was involved in drafting the report, said “no real data” was found to support the idea of ​​shy Trump voters. Instead, it found, among other things, some evidence that the issue was a struggle to reach these voters, who were more likely to support Trump.

“It’s not that they pick up the phone and lie, it’s just that they don’t answer the phone,” he said, but added that pollsters have been working to address this because fewer people are using landlines.

Miringoff said most pollsters have changed their methodologies since 2016 because reaching people by landline is “no longer feasible.” Some have adopted hybrid models to reach voters through different methods.

“Statistically, it’s not enough to justify the conclusion that things are really broken because Donald Trump is voting,” he said. “I think as a voting community we could have problems with and without (him).”

Polls today consistently show a tight race, and those active in the polls say they will now be scrutinized.

“It’s understandable that we need more precision because the stakes seem so high,” Miringoff said. “People want to know who’s going to win this thing.”

Alexander Bolton contributed.

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