Pollsters Worried About Inaccurate Predictions Ahead of Midterms (Newsmax)
By Theodore Bunker | Monday, 26 September 2022 11:56 AM EDT
Pollsters at major public firms, academic institutions, and campaign consultants expressed their concerns to Politico about polling errors causing inaccurate predictions about the upcoming midterm elections.
"There's no question that the polling errors in [20]16 and [20]20 worry the polling profession, worry me as a pollster," Charles Franklin, director of the Marquette Law School Poll, told Politico. "The troubling part is how much of that is unique to when Donald Trump is on the ballot, versus midterms when he is not on the ballot."
Celinda Lake of Lake Research Partners said that finding the right balance of voters, specifically Trump voters, for its samples "was less [of an issue] for a long time. It looks to us like it is getting to be more of a problem recently, with the Mar-a-Lago thing, with his candidates winning a lot of these primaries, with the Jan. 6 committee."
Don Levy, the director of the Siena College Research Institute, added that he's "as careful as careful can be" when it comes to getting the right share of Trump voters, noting that it's not as simple as calling more Republicans.
"It's not partisan nonresponse. It's hardened Trump-backer nonresponse," he said. "A small majority of those are self-identified Republicans, but a significant number of them are self-identified independents or Democrats. You can't correct that by saying, 'Let's weight up the Republicans.' That doesn't work."