Pollsters predicted a much higher vote for Joe Biden, including in Florida, where workers at the Pinellas County Supervisor of Elections Office in Largo process voters’ ballots on Nov. 3.
Octavio Jones/Getty Images
Pollster Bud Roper once said of his field that “a good deal more than half is art and … less than half is science.” After the 2020 polls got a lot wrong, is it time for more candor from pollsters?
Supporters on election night 2016 at a Hillary Clinton party, when it became clear poll-based forecasts had been off target.
Toni L. Sandys/The Washington Post via Getty Images
Polling is an imperfect attempt at providing insight and explanation. But the public’s desire for insight and explanation about elections never ends, so polls endure despite their flaws and failures.
Presidential pollsters in the US have had some embarrassing failures. Here’s a catalog of those miscalls, from the scholar who literally wrote the book on them.