Pollsters this year are taking a range of steps to try to improve the accuracy of their surveys, after significantly understating support for Donald Trump and other GOP candidates in the past two presidential elections. Strategists and pollsters in both parties are worried about whether the steps will work. …
One problem for pollsters as they try to improve their accuracy is that they haven’t settled on the root cause of the errors that left many Americans surprised by Mr. Trump’s victory in 2016 and his closer-than-expected finish in 2020, which the professional association of public opinion researchers determined was the biggest polling miss in 40 years.
Many pollsters and researchers say that a certain type of Republican is declining to take their surveys—the voters most committed to backing Mr. Trump and his style of politics. Others say that these voters are, in fact, answering surveys and are present in the pollsters’ data, but that outdated assumptions about the composition of the nation’s electorate means that they are underrepresented in the results. Pollsters are experimenting with ways to address both problems. CONTINUED
Aaron Zitner, Wall Street Journal
The OPINION TODAY email newsletter is a concise daily rundown of significant new poll results and insightful analysis. It’s FREE. Sign up here: opiniontoday.substack