The political arm of the public-opinion industry famously had a tough election cycle in 2020. Nobody much noticed when polls of primaries went awry after the COVID pandemic struck; we were in unchartered territory when it came to understanding the likelihood to vote or even how to contact voters. But going into the general election, there was a consensus that Joe Biden was going to dispatch Donald Trump by a comfortable margin, which turned out to be wrong (at least in terms of the Electoral College). This polling error, in turn, enhanced Trump’s efforts to depict the entire political system as biased and “rigged,” which has helped the Big Lie spread far and wide in the Republican ranks.
Then came the California gubernatorial recall, and again the polls seemed to have missed what was going to happen by a sizable margin. CONTINUED
Ed Kilgore, New York Magazine