Democrat Party pollsters are warning that they could be in trouble, as their polling has been less reliable than usual in recent elections since former President Donald Trump’s appeal is difficult to measure via surveys.
President Joe Biden beat Trump “by a closer margin than a lot of the polling suggested” in 2020, creating an “oh, shit” moment for Democrat pollsters, according to a Politico report.
Moreover, polls suggested that Democrats would expand their House majority, but, instead, they saw it shrink, the report added.
These revelations reportedly caused five of the Democrat Party’s top polling firms, which are usually in competition with each other, to collaborate in an attempt to fix their less-reliable-than-usual polls.
While Vice President Kamala Harris appears to have caught up to Trump in the polls, Democrat pollsters are still wondering, “How real is her surge?” and warn that, even if their polling is accurate, Trump still has a lot of advantages, Politico reported.
“It’s still a very tough race, and that feels consistent with everything we know,” Margie Omero, a partner at the Democrat polling firm GBAO Strategies, told the outlet.
One recent poll from Navigator Research, for example, found Trump and Harris “essentially tied” across swing states, with specific candidate characteristics that voters generally prefer — such as if the candidate is up for the job or is a strong leader — favoring Trump.
Another stark warning sign for Democrats is the likelihood of a polling error concerning the reality that Trump’s appeal is very difficult to ascertain via polling, as surveys underestimated the forty-fifth president in both 2016 and 2020, Politico reported.
“I spent a ton of time and analysis trying to dig into those problems. And I feel much better educated about those problems,” Nick Gourevitch, a partner at Global Strategy Group, said. “I don’t think there’s any pollster in America who can sit here and say that they’re 100 percent sure that they fixed any issues in polling. I think that would be silly.”
Notably, Democrat pollsters conducted a monthslong experiment in Wisconsin — not to predict an election result but to reach out to voters in several different ways than usual to see if they differ from the voters captured in conventional polling methods.
As a result, the pollsters discovered that conventional polls capture voters who are more politically engaged. This typically does not matter for surveys conducted in low-turnout elections but can cause issues for the reliability of polls conducted for presidential races, as more lower-propensity voters turn out for those elections.
As a result of these potential problems, “most elected and professional Democrats” have been “trying to temper their enthusiasm” at the Democratic National Convention (DNC), Politico reported.
While Democrat pollsters have been trying to address their survey reliability issues since 2020, they warn that their polls could still be underestimating Trump in the 2024 election year — but they have not been able to put their finger on exactly what the reasons for it could be.
“Every year, we’ve had different curveballs,” John Anzalone, the lead pollster on Biden’s 2020 campaign, said. “This is a difficult industry. Something’s gonna happen in 2024. You and I, right now, don’t know what that is.”
Alana Mastrangelo is a reporter for Breitbart News. You can follow her on Facebook and X at @ARmastrangelo, and on Instagram.
