The truth will set you free. We all knew the 2020 election was over. Republicans were projected to lose 10 seats; the opposite happened. Was it as bad as the 2016 election? I don’t think so, but I’m sure there are people who would argue otherwise. There are glaring problems with the way these companies conduct voter surveys, as well as a number of issues that make polling tough. And they don’t know how to deal with it.
A group of Democratic polling firms conducted an autopsy, which noted that Donald Trump was also just 43,000 votes away from winning a second term. But didn’t Joe Biden win? Well, he’s president, that’s true, but the decline, as the House losses and others have noted, has been a train wreck for Democrats. One of the forgotten stories is how well Republicans did in state and local elections while Democrats failed to crack their slate of target legislatures. It may not be much of a consolation prize, but today’s re-establishment of the House has demonstrated the benefits of holding these seats. People, at least, many profits in Trump strongholds. Ultimately, this group of left-wing pollsters concluded that the two areas that blew the polls were turnout and measurement (via Document of democracy):
Turnout is one of the hardest things for pollsters to account for. Simply asking people whether they will vote is unreliable because people tend to overestimate their likelihood of voting because it is socially desirable. Instead, campaign pollsters apply detailed databases containing the historical voting records of millions of individual voters to build a universe of what we think will be the most likely electorate. With this approach, pollsters get close to the mark in most cases, but it depends on whether future elections will look like past elections – and they often don’t, even when there’s nothing to worry about in the pandemic.
Now that we have had time to review 2020 voter files, we have found that our models consistently overestimate Democratic turnout relative to Republican turnout in specific ways. Among low-propensity voters – people we expect to vote infrequently – Republicans’ share of the electorate exceeded expectations and was four times greater than Democrats’ share. This turnout error meant that, at least in some places, we again underestimated the relative turnout among rural and white non-college voters, who are overrepresented among low-propensity Republicans.
Correctly accounting for these voters in higher and lower turnout elections will be a challenge in the future.
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The source of measurement error can be one (or more) of a million different things, and many theories have already been discussed, privately and publicly:
Late mover: This theory was popular after 2016 because exit polls and return polls suggested that late-decision voters overwhelmingly chose Trump. Polling was remarkably stable in 2020, however, and there were almost no undecided voters in the entire race, so it likely didn’t play a major role, at least at the presidential level.
COVID Failure: Another theory points the finger at the pandemic, which has disrupted almost every aspect of conventional campaigning and undoubtedly had some impact on the polls. Perhaps voters with more progressive attitudes towards Covid-19 were not only more willing to wear masks and stay home, but also more willing to respond to our polling calls, while conservatives remained tough to reach.
Social Trust: The COVID-19 hypothesis ties into another popular idea, that some voters are increasingly choosing not to vote due to a lack of “social trust.” High-quality social science research suggests that Americans’ trust in each other has been failing for decades. As some analysts suggest, Trump may have helped turn this into a problem for pollsters, attracting distrustful voters and making his most ardent supporters even more distrustful of other people, the media and perhaps even the polls themselves. This, in turn, may have made his supporters less willing to respond to polls.
Although there is evidence that some of these theories played a role, no consensus has been reached on a solution. We found that there was something systematically different about the people we reached and those we didn’t reach.
It is true that there were miscalculations on our side as well, although the debate about the fairness of these elections continues and shows no sign of dying down. How to fix it? Can this be fixed?
“How do we get people to take surveys if they don’t answer our calls or respond to online surveys? We don’t have that answer yet,” they wrote.
I think the biggest obstacle may be trust in the institution. Until a large proportion of voters trust this process and are not afraid to express their political opinions, the situation will not change. There is a real fear that these companies will compromise the security of personal data. It’s not a matter of voting, but look what happened to the legal fund created for Kyle Rittenhouse. Information is used as a weapon. Freedom of speech and association are under attack. The awakened crowd is looking for blood. Apart from the obvious cybersecurity issues, why should we trust these interviewers? They lie every day. The Russian collusion fiasco was a fake news nightmare. The overall coverage of the Trump White House was inaccurate, exaggerated and full of hysteria. There’s a reason why no one trusts the media anymore.
In the case of Ma’Khia Bryant’s shooting in Columbus, Ohio, NBC News recently redacted a 911 call. They deleted a key detail about Bryant attacking others and trying to stab people, so police were called. CBS News edited bodycam footage of the officer-involved shooting of Adam Toledo in Chicago in March. They framed it in a place where you can’t see the shot of Toledo holding the gun. CBS News was also busted for producing false news about a pay-to-play program between Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Publix over a vaccine distribution deal; Publix donated to DeSantis’ campaign. If you watch the entire video, you’ll find that there was no such plan, and CBS has refused to update, withdraw the video, or apologize for intentionally misleading the public. So yes, I understand why everyone is angry at the media and institutions. One lies every day, the other does nothing. Until this perception changes, you can expect that people will either ignore the pollsters’ calls or simply play along with them.
