President-elect Donald Trump has made a stunning political comeback, vastly outperforming what polls predicted in a third straight election.
In the days leading up to Election Day, poll after poll showed him in a close race with Vice President Kamala Harris. State officials expected results could take days. Lawsuits from groups allied with Trump have been prepared to challenge the results. In the end, the race was called before most of the country woke up on Wednesday. Trump won, and the result wasn’t particularly close.
But the results of this election illustrated a growing theory about why polls underestimate Trump’s performance, according to the vice president of methods and innovation at the Pew Research Center. Courtney Kennedy: Democrats participate in polls more than Republicans.
“Instead of saying, ‘Oh, gosh, we don’t know what’s going on,’ ‘No, no, no, that’s pretty obvious,'” Kennedy told USA TODAY in an interview. “This election has answered the question of whether the basic pattern of Democrats being more likely to poll than Republicans…is still with us or has disappeared. The answer: It is still with us, and may be in “Some parts of the country have gotten worse.”
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Polls left people shocked in previous elections
Before Trump, former President Barack Obama beat his own polling expectations to defeat Mitt Romney in 2012.
In 2016, a popular poll Thirty-five eight It showed that Hillary Clinton was ahead of Trump by 45.7% compared to 41.8% on Election Day. In 2020, President Biden led Trump 8.4 percentage pointsa big lead in what ended up being a close race.
The Pew Research Center previously reported that the number of pollsters has increased and polling methods have since become more diverse 2016 elections.
Kennedy said Pew has seen some success in its own surveys with a variety of methods. A large annual poll conducted in the spring revealed some societal trends that emerged on election night, including a leaning of young people toward Republicans and a growing share of Republicans across the country.
What polls got this election right and wrong
Kennedy said the polling was better this election than in recent years, and understanding its limitations could help pollsters make further adjustments in future elections.
“There has been progress, but it has not been perfect,” she said, explaining that some pollsters are considering making weight adjustments to account for Republican non-participation. “It’s not a silver bullet, it doesn’t make the survey perfect, but it helps reduce the extent of the pattern of non-response that we’re struggling with.”
She also noted that Trump’s overperformance compared to the polls may be significant on a cumulative national level, but the final numbers may show that individual races were more accurate. She pointed to California, where votes are still being counted, and expects these numbers to be close to what state polls suggested.
Polls are not only used to show voters’ support for candidates, but they are also used to find out what voters care most about in this election. Polls generally showed that the economy was their biggest problem and that they favored Trump in helping to fix it. Kennedy said polls were also clear in showing dissatisfaction with the Biden administration and the direction the country is headed.
But creating change in the Biden administration was something Harris struggled to do in her short presidential campaign.
“This election has shown that polls capture the issues that matter, what motivates people, and the moods and feelings about candidates better than prediction,” Kennedy said.
Contributing: Philip M. Billy, Joey Garrison
Kinsey Crowley is a feature news reporter at USA TODAY. Contact her at kcrowley@gannett.com, and follow her on X and TikTok @kinseycrowley.
