US elections, why did the polls go wrong?

Pre-election polls in the United States showed that Joe Biden would win the presidential race by an overwhelming majority and that Democrats would take control of the Senate.

But many of these polls did not hit the mark.

Frank Luntz is a well-known Republican pollster. Ahead of election day, he told FOX News television that a mistake in polls like in 2016 would jeopardize his business.

"If Donald Trump is right and the pollsters are wrong, then people like me will have to find a new profession," Mr Luntz said.

Joe Biden's victory, though profound, was not overwhelming. Democrats took few seats in the Senate and lost some in the House of Representatives. Mr Luntz says the results were "devastating" for the poll industry.

"Certainly the polls went wrong," said Joseph Campbell of the American University.

Mr. Campbell is the author of a book on the famous mistakes of political polls over the years.

"Polls showed there would be a blue wave, that Joe Biden would easily take over the White House, bring a majority in the Senate and a majority increase in the House of Representatives. But none of that happened," he said. it.

"Polls create pre-election expectations," said Bill Schneider, a political analyst at George Mason University.

"What the polls did is that they encouraged a lot of President Trump supporters who were enthusiastic, but who would not necessarily vote. They are white working-class people who do not vote en masse. Anger prompted them to come out and vote. "to save the president and the Republican Party," said the professor.

There is an error rate in each survey. Understanding who will vote is important to keep this percentage as low as possible.

"Every pollster aims to remove from the poll those people who say they will vote but who do not actually go. Pollsters do this in different ways; they use certain mechanisms to remove from the poll people who are unlikely to vote. ", Says Mr. Campbell.

There is a reason that pollsters say their polls are simply a "picture in time".

"Polls are very useful for understanding what is happening politically, but it is difficult to predict what will happen next, because people change," says Professor Schneider.

Although the poll industry may suffer some consequences, it will not go away.

"Opinion polls and surveys have become much more ingrained, much broader in American life, in business life, in cultural and political life," Campbell said.

So much so that polls for the 2024 election have already begun. VOA