Pollsters' predictions of a Biden blowout fall short

News 12's Walt Kane spoke with one expert about why the polls can be so off.

News 12 Staff

Nov 6, 2020, 12:06 AM

Updated 1,433 days ago

Share:

The American public was told by pollsters that the election would be a Joe Biden blowout over President Donald Trump, but that didn't happen.
While Biden is leading against the president, there are still states that are too close to call.
News 12's Walt Kane spoke with one expert about why the polls can be so off.
Ashley Koning, director of the Eagleton Institute for Public Interest Polling at Rutgers University, says the biggest problem with trying to poll voters is that polls just don't do a good job of predicting the future.
"They're excellent explanatory tools after the fact assessing attitudes and behaviors and why respondents did what they did or voted the way they voted," says Koning. "But they're really not meant to predict, even though we try to use them as such in the horse race."
So, if a group is asked why they voted for a candidate, a poll will give you useful information. However, if voters are asked who they plan to vote for they may tell you something that they might not actually do.
Then there are Trump supporters who are too shy to admit it.
"It's become a hot, sensationalized story in the media right now talking about shy Trump voters, the research from 2016, and in the past few years has not beared that out in the data," says Koning.
Koning says that a bigger problem is that polls simply have a margin of error.