Pollsters said they believe they have fixed the previous polling errors that saw former President Donald Trump outperform his numbers in 2016 and 2020, the Hill reported.
The polls in battleground states show a tight race well within the margin of error and many said they believe a Trump overperformance like in 2016 and 2020 will give him the presidency. Vice President Kamala Harris leads Trump by about 4 points in national polling.
"We don't always see the misses in the same direction," said Chris Jackson, the senior vice president of public affairs for Ipsos to The Hill. "I can tell you that the polling industry has done substantial changes to how we do our surveys to try to account for what we think was driving those errors in 2020. So while there undoubtedly will be errors in the future, they're probably going to be driven by different things and go in different directions."
In 2020, President Joe Biden won a tighter race than polls expected and in 2016, Trump upset Hillary Clinton to win the presidency, despite most people predicting a Clinton win.
Jackson said pollsters have adjusted their methodologies, including accounting for demographics, party registration and past voting history.
"There's a bunch of different ways of doing it that are currently being used in the field, but that has been a relatively widespread shift in the last four years," Jackson told The Hill. "I think the methodological changes are significant enough that we shouldn't necessarily take the 2016 and 2020 results as certain."
Democrat pollster Celinda Lake said pollsters have had issues measuring the potential turnout for both Harris and Trump.
"You may have some younger, some people of color who don't look like they're turning out either," Lake told The Hill.
Lake said many voters who are already registered and planning to vote for the first time favor Trump.
"What we're doing in our polling at this close [to the election] date is we're often giving [multiple] turnout models," Lake said to The Hill. "This is where we're at. If it's like this, this is where we're at."
Lee Miringoff, the director of the Marist College Institute for Public Opinion pointed out FiveThirtyEight had Clinton up 4 points and RealClearPolitics had her up 2 points in national polling in an election she won by 2 points in the popular vote.
"The forecasting and polling doesn't necessarily get separated for the different measurements that they really are," Miringoff told The Hill.
Sam Barron ✉
Sam Barron has almost two decades of experience covering a wide range of topics including politics, crime and business.
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