Democrats are worried that they might be in trouble because their polls have not been as accurate as usual in recent races. As it turns out, it is hard to measure how popular former President Donald Trump is.
A Politico story says that President Joe Biden beat Donald “by a tighter margin than a lot of the polling showed” in 2020. This made Democrat pollsters go “oh, shit.”
Also, polls showed that Democrats’ House lead was going to grow, but it actually shrunk, the story said.
These findings led five of the top polling firms for the Democratic Party, which normally compete with each other, to work together to try to fix their less accurate than usual polls.
Democrat pollsters are still asking, “How real is her surge?” and warn that Trump still has a lot of benefits, even if their polls are correct, Politico reported.
“It’s still a very tough race, and that fits with what we know,” Margie Omero, a partner at the polling company GBAO Strategies for Democrats, told the news source.
In a recent study from Navigator Research, for example, Trump and Harris were “basically tied” across split states. However, Trump did better in areas that voters usually care about, like whether the candidate is qualified for the job or is a strong leader.
Politico reported that polls missed the 45th president in both 2016 and 2020, which is a stark warning sign for Democrats. Another stark warning sign is the possibility of a polling mistake since Trump’s popularity is hard to measure through polls.
“I looked into those problems for a long time and thought a lot about them. And I know a lot more about those issues now,” said Nick Gourevitch, a partner at Global Strategy Group. “I don’t think there’s a single researcher in the United States who can sit here and say they’re sure they fixed all the problems with the polls.”
