(Photo by Joe Kovacs)
Conservative political commentator Dan Bongino on election night said there was one thing on which probably everyone could agree.
"One call we can ALL make right now is that many POLLSTERS SUCK!" he wrote on Twitter.
Breaking: One call we can ALL make right now is that many POLLSTERS SUCK!
— Dan Bongino (@dbongino) November 4, 2020
There was evidence to back his opinion.
Four years after mass-media pollsters got the race entirely wrong between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, they did it again.
This time, heading into Election Day, Biden had an average lead of 10 points nationally. An ABC-Washington Post just before the vote had Biden ahead by 17 points in Wisconsin, which is too close to call.
A Quinnipiac poll indicated Biden had a 5-point lead over Trump in Florida, which Trump won by 3 points, and Biden a 4-point lead over the president in Ohio, which Trump won by 8 points.
Pollsters blamed their failure on an increasing unwillingness of the public to declare their support for conservative candidates.
But pollsters who factored in the Trump "shy" vote, such as Robert Cahaly of the Trafalgar Group, predicted the president's strong performance.
"It's been this relentless barrage of hatred toward President Trump and the complete assumption Biden was going to walk it," said Fox News election analyst Steve Hilton.
"Because of the incredible degree of hate that's been directed to President Trump and his supporters by nearly all the media," he said, "you've got this situation ... where people didn't necessarily want to admit to pollsters who they were supporting because it was socially embarrassing to do so."
Another factor was how the pollsters weigh the populations they sample, tending to survey more Democrats.
DailyMail.com noted Economist/YouGov poll had expected a Biden victory, 53-43. IBD/TIPP forecast 53-46, Reuters-Ipsos 52-43, USC Dornsife 54-43, CNBC-Change Research 52-42, Quinnipiac 50-39, and Rasmussen was the closest, 48-47 for Biden.
"If all you hear day in and day out that Trump is an evil, racist monster, then it's going to make it less likely you admit to supporting him, including to pollsters," Hilton said. "And they haven't really taken that into account at all."
Robert Cahaly, who predicted President Trump's victory in 2016 by factoring in the "shy" vote, saw Trump winning in 2020.
Clinton cast off Trump's base as "deplorables," and it was even worse this time, he said.
"This year had more things where you can get punished for expressing an opinion outside the mainstream than almost any year I can think of in modern history," Cahaly said.
The attacks have included getting beat up for wearing a Trump hat and harassed for having a sticker on their car, he said.
Fox News' Tucker Carlson said the failure of the pollsters is telling.
"The most basic question the polls raise: Is this a free country? If you're afraid to express a political view in public – you could be fired for it, banished for it – is that a free society? The answer is, of course, not."
Pollster Frank Luntz admitted before the election that if the pollsters got it wrong in 2020, the industry likely "is done."
"The public will have no faith," he said. "No confidence."
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