The polls underestimated Donald J. Trump in 2016.
They underestimated him again in 2020.
So can we trust the polls this time?
I’m asked this question a lot, and if I only get one quick reply, my answer is simple: no.
No, you can’t trust the polls — at least if you mean by “trust” what I think you do. You can’t safely assume that the candidate leading in the polls is going to win. They’re not exact measurements, and elections nowadays are so close that even an excellent poll could leave someone feeling misled on election night.
But while the polls aren’t so precise that you can trust they’ll nail a tight election, you can’t assume that the polls will badly err again, either, as they did in 2016 or 2020.
Last week, we detailed the best theories for why the polls erred in 2016 and 2020, as well as what pollsters have done to try to improve since. On balance, these changes add up to a case for cautious optimism on better accuracy, but there are no guarantees.
The case for pessimism is serious as well.
The optimistic case for more accurate pollsThere are two main reasons to be cautiously optimistic that the polls could avoid badly underestimating Mr. Trump yet again.
First, the pandemic is over. There’s serious evidence suggesting the pandemic was a major factor in the polling error in 2020, as many Democrats stayed at home — and responded to polls — while Republicans went about their lives. It would explain why the fixes that pollsters made after the 2016 election proved so ineffective four years later. If so, many polls might be accurate even without any major changes at all.
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