Zürcher Nachrichten - US pollsters underestimate Trump support -- again

EUR -
AED 3.826681
AFN 70.961758
ALL 98.138602
AMD 405.652886
ANG 1.877182
AOA 951.190259
ARS 1045.720247
AUD 1.602814
AWG 1.877897
AZN 1.775245
BAM 1.955573
BBD 2.102956
BDT 124.465544
BGN 1.955294
BHD 0.392554
BIF 3076.642669
BMD 1.041829
BND 1.403837
BOB 7.197164
BRL 6.043693
BSD 1.041579
BTN 87.914489
BWP 14.229347
BYN 3.408604
BYR 20419.848375
BZD 2.099456
CAD 1.456529
CDF 2991.091432
CHF 0.930957
CLF 0.036923
CLP 1018.83097
CNY 7.54601
CNH 7.562783
COP 4573.368835
CRC 530.538382
CUC 1.041829
CUP 27.608468
CVE 110.252195
CZK 25.343745
DJF 185.478458
DKK 7.457729
DOP 62.772709
DZD 139.835759
EGP 51.726992
ERN 15.627435
ETB 127.508391
FJD 2.371151
FKP 0.822333
GBP 0.831435
GEL 2.855018
GGP 0.822333
GHS 16.456089
GIP 0.822333
GMD 73.970229
GNF 8977.957272
GTQ 8.040066
GYD 217.904692
HKD 8.110066
HNL 26.320943
HRK 7.431636
HTG 136.72412
HUF 411.522823
IDR 16610.452733
ILS 3.856892
IMP 0.822333
INR 87.968134
IQD 1364.44153
IRR 43834.955489
ISK 145.523076
JEP 0.822333
JMD 165.930728
JOD 0.738765
JPY 161.244275
KES 134.884334
KGS 90.122166
KHR 4193.512952
KMF 492.268155
KPW 937.645704
KRW 1463.259646
KWD 0.320727
KYD 0.867999
KZT 520.059599
LAK 22878.342838
LBP 93271.167197
LKR 303.144792
LRD 187.998165
LSL 18.795317
LTL 3.076251
LVL 0.630192
LYD 5.086409
MAD 10.478083
MDL 18.997794
MGA 4861.435378
MKD 61.522855
MMK 3383.819949
MNT 3540.134882
MOP 8.35093
MRU 41.443187
MUR 48.810083
MVR 16.10707
MWK 1806.090235
MXN 21.283008
MYR 4.654932
MZN 66.583684
NAD 18.795317
NGN 1767.675143
NIO 38.325549
NOK 11.53576
NPR 140.663663
NZD 1.785942
OMR 0.400943
PAB 1.041579
PEN 3.949541
PGK 4.193513
PHP 61.404399
PKR 289.239507
PLN 4.337676
PYG 8131.055634
QAR 3.798559
RON 4.978071
RSD 116.991412
RUB 108.671879
RWF 1421.834864
SAR 3.911473
SBD 8.734231
SCR 14.272055
SDG 626.663972
SEK 11.497837
SGD 1.402931
SHP 0.822333
SLE 23.68116
SLL 21846.638123
SOS 595.230868
SRD 36.978718
STD 21563.75683
SVC 9.113941
SYP 2617.626467
SZL 18.788818
THB 35.922648
TJS 11.092512
TMT 3.646401
TND 3.309016
TOP 2.440072
TRY 35.9978
TTD 7.074178
TWD 33.946439
TZS 2770.578216
UAH 43.089995
UGX 3848.553017
USD 1.041829
UYU 44.294855
UZS 13362.448044
VES 48.506662
VND 26482.251319
VUV 123.688032
WST 2.90836
XAF 655.880824
XAG 0.033274
XAU 0.000384
XCD 2.815595
XDR 0.792308
XOF 655.880824
XPF 119.331742
YER 260.379151
ZAR 18.915093
ZMK 9377.71492
ZMW 28.772658
ZWL 335.468513
  • SCS

    0.2300

    13.27

    +1.73%

  • BCC

    3.4200

    143.78

    +2.38%

  • RELX

    0.9900

    46.75

    +2.12%

  • RBGPF

    59.2400

    59.24

    +100%

  • GSK

    0.2600

    33.96

    +0.77%

  • CMSD

    0.0150

    24.46

    +0.06%

  • RYCEF

    -0.0100

    6.79

    -0.15%

  • RIO

    -0.2200

    62.35

    -0.35%

  • BCE

    0.0900

    26.77

    +0.34%

  • NGG

    1.0296

    63.11

    +1.63%

  • CMSC

    0.0320

    24.672

    +0.13%

  • AZN

    1.3700

    65.63

    +2.09%

  • JRI

    -0.0200

    13.21

    -0.15%

  • VOD

    0.1323

    8.73

    +1.52%

  • BTI

    0.4000

    37.38

    +1.07%

  • BP

    0.2000

    29.72

    +0.67%

US pollsters underestimate Trump support -- again
US pollsters underestimate Trump support -- again / Photo: Olivia BUGAULT, Samuel BARBOSA - AFP

US pollsters underestimate Trump support -- again

Opinion polls underestimated the level of Donald Trump's support for the third US presidential election in a row, predicting a neck-and-neck race with Kamala Harris when in the end the Republican edged the vice president across battleground states.

Text size:

Trump's win involved surging support in a number of demographics and regions, but experts said pollsters failed to accurately predict races in states where the results differed significantly from the last election in 2020.

"They did fine in battlegrounds, but... they failed to provide the essential information that Trump was surging across the board," said Michael Bailey, a professor of political science at Georgetown University.

More than 90 percent of US counties voted in higher numbers for the Republican billionaire than they did in 2020, according to The New York Times.

Overall, the polls had predicted razor thin margins in races in the seven battleground states that decide close US elections. As of Wednesday, Trump was projected to win five of those states by between one and three percentage points.

The former president was well on his way to sweeping all seven states, according to those projections.

"Trump may have been mildly underestimated but I think the polls ended up doing pretty well, collectively -- this was not a huge miss," said Kyle Kondik, a political analyst at the University of Virginia.

"The polls suggested Trump had a decent chance to win, and he won."

- Small margins -

The pollsters' performance was under the microscope this year, after two big misses in succession: they had failed to anticipate Trump's victory in 2016, and had overestimated the margin by which President Joe Biden won against him in 2020.

"Trump was underestimated by about two points this time around" in key states, said Pedro Azevedo, Head of US polling at AtlasIntel.

In Pennsylvania, the latest polling average from RealClearPolitics put the Republican in the lead by 0.4 percentage points. As of Wednesday, he was ahead by two points.

In North Carolina, polls predicted a 1.2-point margin for Trump, and he won by three points over Harris.

In Wisconsin, the vice president was given a 0.4-point lead, but the projected results showed Trump leading the count by 0.9 points.

- Unable to adjust -

The main problem has not changed since Trump's arrival on the US political scene about a decade ago: a fringe of his electorate refuses to take part in opinion polls, and firms have failed to be able to accurately gauge their impact.

In the most recent polls conducted by The New York Times with Siena College, "white Democrats were 16 percent likelier to respond than white Republicans," NYT data analyst and polling guru Nate Cohn wrote two days before the election.

That disparity had grown over the course of the 2024 campaign, he added.

Although pollsters like The New York Times/Siena tried to compensate for these flaws with statistical adjustments, it was clearly not enough.

"It is apparent that polls significantly underestimated Trump's growth among Hispanic voters," said Azevedo, pointing to Trump's larger-than-expected victories in Nevada and Florida.

"This is also the case among white voters," he said, adding that while most polls expected Harris to "improve her margins" in this demographic, Trump outperformed the polling and ran up his numbers in rural areas.

Iowa was a prime example of this, with a poll three days before Election Day giving Harris a three-point victory in the solidly Republican state. In the end, Trump won it comfortably by 13 points, Azevedo said.

J. Ann Selzer, the author of that inaccurate Iowa poll, said the difference could have been made by late-deciding voters.

"The late deciders could have opted for Trump in the final days of the campaign after interviewing was complete," she told the Des Moines Register newspaper.

"The people who had already voted but opted not to tell our interviewers for whom they voted could have given Trump an edge."

N.Zaugg--NZN