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Everyone is talking about what went wrong in the election. It wasn’t the polls.

Published

2 years ago

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Everyone is talking about what went wrong in the election. It wasn’t the polls.

On Election Night, I was nervous. I’m a pollster and a former political data journalist. I knew that if the polls whiffed again — like they did in 2020 — Americans would write off polling as irreparably broken.

Now, there’s enough data to reach a verdict — and, despite what you may have been hearing, the polls did well. No, the data wasn’t perfect, and the industry still faces long-term challenges. But we’ve proven that we can get close to the mark — which is the best we can reasonably expect from polling.

We’ve proven that we can get close to the mark — which is the best we can reasonably expect from polling.

You don’t have to take my word for it. Let’s compare the average of pre-election polls — computed by FiveThirtyEight and RealClearPolitics — to the latest results in swing states where NBC News has projected a winner.

In the states that decided the election, the polls were generally off by 1 to 3 points. In the national popular vote, the RCP average had Trump ahead by 0.1 and he’ll likely win by 1 or 2 points. For polls — blunt instruments that typically use less than a thousand interviews to estimate how an entire state or nation feels — a 1- to 3-percentage-point error is great.

Polls in competitive Senate races were only slightly less accurate. Some results haven’t been finalized yet, but so far the key Senate races only saw two uncomfortable misses: overestimating Democratic Sen. Jacky Rosen of Nevada and underestimating Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas by roughly 5 points each. In the other toss-ups where 538 and RCP computed an average, the polls missed by just a couple percentage points. Again, it’s unrealistic to expect polls to nail every result — a 1- to 3-point error is about as good as it gets.

  • In Nevada’s Senate race, the 538 average had Rosen up 5.7 over Republican Sam Brown, and the RCP average had her up 4.9. The latest results show Rosen, the projected winner, up 1.4.
  • In Michigan’s Senate race, the 538 average had Democrat Elissa Slotkin up 3.6 over Republican Mike Rogers, and the RCP average had her up 2.3. The results show Slotkin, the projected winner, up by 0.3.
  • In Ohio, the 538 average had Republican Bernie Moreno up 0.8 over Democrat Sherrod Brown, and the RCP average had the Republican up 1.7. The results show Moreno, the projected winner, up by 4.
  • In Wisconsin, the 538 average had Democrat Tammy Baldwin up 2.2 over Republican Eric Hovde, and the RCP average had her up 1.8. The results show Baldwin, the projected winner, up 0.9.
  • In Montana, the 538 average had Republican Tim Sheehy up 6.9 over Democrat Jon Tester, and the RCP average had the Republican up 7.7. The results show Sheehy, the projected winner, up 7.4.
  • And in Texas, the 538 average had Cruz up 4 over Democrat Colin Allred, and the RCP average had Cruz up 4.4. The results show Cruz, the projected winner, up 8.6.

These results are solid and should keep the polling industry alive. But we don’t have a clean bill of health just yet.

Surveys are still plagued by nonresponse: Almost 99% of people who are selected for a poll don’t complete it. Some of the groups we need to learn about the most — young voters, Latino voters, the politically disengaged — are the toughest to poll.

These results are solid and should keep the polling industry alive. But we don’t have a clean bill of health just yet.

Some pollsters might also be “herding.” That happens when a less-than-principled pollster gets an unexpected result, they might toss it in the garbage or tinker with their statistical models until their poll matches the average. That might explain why a suspicious number of Pennsylvania polls showed Trump and Harris exactly tied.

And, while the polls didn’t err by much, they did consistently lowball Trump by a couple points. Ideally, the polls would be unbiased — underestimating Harris roughly half the time, rather than only missing Trump voters.

Pollsters have partial solutions to each of these problems. We use statistical tools, such as weights, to ensure that less responsive groups are given the right amount of influence. Those same weights can create the illusion of “herding” — that is, some pollsters adjusted their sample to get the right number of Trump and Biden 2020 supporters, which naturally brought their results closer to the average. And, while the polls missed some of Trump’s edge in 2024, the error was significantly smaller than in 2020.

We don’t have full solutions to these problems. Nobody knows how to transform America into a nation of eager survey-takers or how to prevent anxious, underfunded firms from subconsciously pushing their results towards the average. And we haven’t found that last slice of the Trump vote. But I hope that on Tuesday, we bought our industry a little more time to solve these issues. I’d like to think we earned it.

David Byler

David Byler is chief of research at Noble Predictive Insights, a non-partisan polling firm anchored in the Southwest. He was previously a data columnist for the Washington Post.

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Trump-backed Jay Feely wins GOP primary in Arizona’s battleground 1st District

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16 minutes ago

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July 22, 2026

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Former Arizona Cardinals kicker Jay Feely cruised to victory in Arizona’s 1st District on Tuesday, one of the nation’s most competitive battlegrounds.

Feely, a close ally of President Donald Trump, leveraged Trump’s endorsement to topple former state Rep. Joseph Chaplik.

He’ll face a steep challenge defeating the Democratic nominee in November: The 1st District, which spans the affluent suburbs north of Phoenix, is one of House Democrats’ top targets after Trump won it by just three points in 2024. Feely is looking to keep the seat under GOP control amid a midterm year that presents major headwinds for the party.

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Rep. Andy Biggs wins GOP primary for Arizona governor

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16 minutes ago

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July 22, 2026

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Trump-endorsed Rep. Andy Biggs has won the GOP primary to face Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs in November, setting up a marquee governor’s race in one of America’s most competitive states.

Biggs, a former chair of the hardline House Freedom Caucus and a close ally of President Donald Trump, easily dealt with his only serious challenger, Rep. David Schweikert, on Tuesday. Before the primary results were official, he had already begun pivoting to the general election against Hobbs, who is seen as one of the most vulnerable Democratic governors this fall.

Republicans feel bullish about their odds of flipping the governorship, after Trump carried the state by five points in 2024. But even though Trump won last time, the state has gradually shifted to pure tossup territory over the past few years, electing Democrats to both Senate seats, as well as the attorney general and secretary of state’s offices.

Hobbs had already shifted her focus to Biggs as well. Her campaign has amassed a significant warchest for the race and has already started running ads. Biggs, given his lack of a significant primary challenge, has been able to hold onto more cash than his GOP rivals, but is still behind Hobbs.

The race will test whether Republicans, who are starting down a potentially bruising midterm cycle, can reclaim the top office of a state that has long been a place of success for the party.

During the Republican primary debate, Biggs spent more time talking about his working relationship with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Arizona Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly than he did flexing his endorsement from Trump or highlighting his House record, including his time atop the Freedom Caucus. Instead, he tried to refocus on his bipartisanship in Congress and his leadership in the state legislature.

“I know how to reach across the aisle,” Biggs said during the debate.

But he will still have to contend with many of his past stances, including his role in trying to overturn the 2020 election.

And Hobbs is already working to ensure voters know where Biggs stands on key issues as a longtime member of the House, including his anti-abortion positions and his role in 2020. Her campaign has repeatedly attacked him as “too extreme” for the state and has dubbed him “basement Biggs” for keeping a relatively low profile throughout the GOP primary.

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Trump-backed Mark Lamb wins Arizona House primary despite sex scandals

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16 minutes ago

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July 22, 2026

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A scandal-plagued House candidate powered by President Donald Trump’s endorsement won a messy primary Tuesday.

Mark Lamb, the former Pinal County sheriff, overcame a late push from self-funding candidate Daniel Keenan in Arizona’s 5th District. Lamb will enter November as the heavy frontrunner in the deep-red Phoenix-area district to replace Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.), who is running for governor.

Keenan had poured nearly $2 million of his own cash into the campaign and attempted to make Lamb’s alleged sexual misconduct and abuse of power central to the race. Lamb has denied the allegations.

But Lamb — bolstered by Trump and Arizona-based Turning Point USA — managed to ward off the attacks.

The race’s outcome reveals the strength of Trump’s endorsement, and it’s the latest example of how willing GOP primary voters have been to accept scandal-ridden candidates favored by the president.

Lamb, who served as sheriff until 2024, earned national notoriety as a gun-toting critic of the Biden administration’s immigration and border policy. He secured Trump’s backing for the 5th District contest last year.

Then in May, the Arizona Republic launched a multi-part investigation alleging that Lamb engaged in a yearslong pattern of sending sexual images and instigating intimate encounters between him, his wife and others. One woman involved, Jillian Stannard, accused Lamb of encouraging her husband to have sex with other women, including Lamb’s wife. She also alleged that Lamb threatened her, saying there would be consequences, when Stannard raised concerns to religious leaders.

Screenshots the Republic obtained of messages with another woman, Tammy Peacock, suggest Lamb — then a sitting county sheriff — threatened to leverage Arizona’s revenge porn law against her.

In a statement last week, Lamb spokesperson Ed Morabito told Blue Light News that “these allegations are false and come from long-discredited political opponents.”

Lamb did not lose any significant endorsements in the wake of the scandals — Trump reinforced his endorsement in mid-July — even as Keenan made the allegations central to his campaign.

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