Trump Trounced Pollsters and Media Outlets
More than Vice President Kamala Harris.
In a surprising repeat of past election cycles, former President Donald Trump secured a decisive victory in the 2024 U.S. presidential election Tuesday, defying the expectations of most major polling agencies.
Despite forecasts showing a close race, Trump’s win highlights a persistent and increasingly critical issue in political polling: accuracy. As in previous elections, many polls underestimated support for Trump, leaving analysts and the public questioning if traditional polling methods can still be trusted.
A common post-election refrain: “Allan Lichtman fails to predict the correct outcome of the election,” Natalie Neysa Alund reported for USA TODAY on November 6.
“Allan Lichtman, the historian who predicted 9 of the last elections, failed to accurately predict who voters would choose to become the 47th president of the United States,” noted Alund.
Lichtman was far from alone.
The gap between polling predictions and actual voter behavior has raised concerns within the polling industry. Experts suggest that the same factors that skewed polls in 2016 and 2020 — like under-sampling certain demographics and the so-called “shy voter” effect — may still be at play. Trump’s base, often characterized by its…