Democratic party aligned polling firms are trying to figure out why they've spent the last decade almost being absolutely wrong about Democratic margins, and they still haven't come up with a consensus.
A group of top Democratic Party pollsters are set to release a public statement Tuesday acknowledging “major errors” in their 2020 polling — errors that left party officials stunned by election results that failed to come close to expectations in November.
In an unusual move, five of the party’s biggest polling firms have spent the past few months working together to explore what went wrong last year and how it can be fixed. It’s part of an effort to understand why — despite data showing Joe Biden well ahead of former President Donald Trump, and Democrats poised to increase their House majority — the party won the presidency, the Senate and House by extremely narrow margins.
“Twenty-twenty was an ‘Oh, s---' moment for all of us,” said one pollster involved in the effort, who was granted anonymity to discuss the process candidly. “And I think that we all kinda quickly came to the point that we need to set our egos aside. We need to get this right."
That’s about where the answers end. The collaboration’s first public statement acknowledges that their industry “saw major errors and failed to live up to our own expectations.” But the memo also underscores the limits of the polling autopsy, noting that “no consensus on a solution has emerged.”
According to Democrats involved with the internal review, Tuesday’s statement marks the beginning of a years-long process to examine why, since 2012, most major elections have tilted against the party, despite favorable polling data before the vote. Up and down the ballot, Democrats have been, more often than not, shell-shocked by defeats in races they thought to be competitive, or narrower-than-expected, victories in contests they thought they led comfortably.
Democrats are not alone in reviewing what went wrong last year. The polling industry is engaged in multiple reviews of its 2020 performance, including a forthcoming report from the American Association for Public Opinion Research’s task force that is expected to address the overestimation of Democrats’ performance, from the presidential race down to races for Congress and state offices.
The previously undisclosed Democratic polling review is not being replicated by Republicans, who ultimately lost the presidency and the Senate, and won fewer House seats than Democrats. While some in the GOP were also surprised by the party’s competitiveness last November and are studying their methods, there is no similar, organized effort moving into the 2022 midterms and the 2024 presidential election.
There’s no simple answer for why the polls have missed the mark in recent elections. But one likely culprit for some of the errors is the deteriorating public trust in institutions, like government and the news media — and the correlation between that wariness and voting for Trump. Between his public statements and Twitter account, the former president cast doubt on polling specifically, which the Democratic consultants suggested led to his supporters refusing to participate in surveys.
“Trump went after the polls,” said another Democratic pollster involved in the partnership. “He was really pretty overt to those that were listening about some of his distrust of polls or media.”
The 2020 election shattered turnout records — and since November, pollsters have been eagerly awaiting official information from the states about who voted, and who didn’t. That data is now almost entirely available, and there are clues hidden within.
The Democratic pollsters, who typically compete against each other for business, acknowledge that Trump was able to activate large numbers of voters who had turned out less reliably in the past. Looking at one state where the polls were off — Iowa, where Trump beat Biden handily and what had been seen as a toss-up Senate race went decisively for incumbent GOP Sen. Joni Ernst — Republicans classified as “low-propensity voters” turned out at four times the rate of Democrats in that category, according to the Democratic memo.
“This turnout error was clearly one factor in polling being off across the board, but especially in deeply Republican areas,” the memo reads. “It also meant, at least in some places, we again underestimated relative turnout among rural and white non-college voters, who are overrepresented among low propensity Republicans.”
Red state non-college white voters lied to pollsters about Trump. In states like Iowa, Maine, and South Carolina, Democrats didn't have a chance despite the polls saying they did. In all three states, Dems lost by double-digits in Senate races.
Getting suckered into thinking we had a chance is a dangerous game, and it's one we have to stop.
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