Pollsters are again staring down a familiar nemesis: Donald Trump. The polling industry whiffed every year Trump has been on the ballot. … And now, with Trump expanding his lead over his GOP primary rivals, pollsters are fretting about a bloc of the electorate that has made his support nearly impossible to measure accurately.
“It’s looking a lot like Trump is going to be on the ballot” next November, said Democratic pollster Andrew Baumann. “So that is all back with a vengeance.”
It’s not that Trump is some mystical force. The problems are practical. In 2020, he drew out significant numbers of people who had rarely — if ever — voted and who either weren’t included in polls or refused to participate in them. Trump trashed the polls that found him consistently trailing Biden. This created a feedback loop that made his supporters even less likely to respond, making the polls even more wrong.
Baumann was among the attendees and presenters at this week’s American Association for Public Opinion Research’s annual conference, a yearly gathering of pollsters from the academic, media and campaign worlds. That organization has been grappling with the future of political polling for decades. CONTINUED
Steven Shepard, Politico
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