Tuesday’s victories for Democrats in the U.S. House and Republicans in the Senate made for a much less surprising election night than President Trump’s election two years ago, but that didn’t prevent a rerun of the debate over whether pollsters had missed the trends that became clear late Tuesday.
Against renewed criticism from some cable commentators, polling experts offered at least tepidly positive appraisals of polling performance on Wednesday, as ballots were still being tallied across the country. A Washington Post preliminary analysis of poll accuracy across U.S. Senate and gubernatorial races suggests that errors were smaller than for similar contests in the past, including state presidential polls in 2016, but that these surveys did tend to underestimate Republican candidates more than Democratic ones this year. CONT.
Scott Clement, Washington Post