What Went Wrong With Polling? Some Early Theories
In 2016, polls severely underestimated voter support for Donald Trump. This year, in 2020, the same phenomenon occurred, despite pollsters' efforts to make the polls more accurate. In fact, the national polls were even worse than they were four years ago. This article talks about the plausible reasons for why this could have happened. A possible reason is that President Trump hurt the polls. For years, he denounced polling and news media, which likely encouraged his supporters to participate less in polls. Because of this, the polls could have been ever more underestimating of Trump in 2020 because of the lack of support of him in the polls. Another possible reason is that the resistance hurt the polls. The election of President Trump was followed by high amounts of Democratic action, whether it was in the Women's March or the Black Lives Matter protests. Typically, politically engaged voters are more likely to participate in political surveys, which would lead to more Democrats responding to this year's election polls than Republicans. The article talks about other possible causes that could have hurt the polls. Although these are just theories, it is very likely that they were responsible for the election polls being especially inaccurate this year.