That says it all. Narrator: Trust in polls and pollsters hit a new low in 2016, when most showed that Hillary Clinton was more likely to win. How did the polls lead us astray? It just came out of nowhere. Narrator: And then again in 2020. The polling was wrong. It was wrong again. Narrator: Fast forward to 2024, and few are daring to make a call. I mean, this is the closest race in American history. It is really neck and neck. Narrator: In fact, there is only one perfect poll, and that's called an election. Believe it or not, the polls are not becoming less accurate over time. So how did a once-respected industry that grew to a value of $20 billion come to this? And can it win that trust back? TV presenter: Famed statistician Dr. George Gallup tells Washington from week to week.

what the nation is thinking. Narrator: It's been more than 80 years since a man named George Gallup conducted his first poll. He used a simple but effective technique to survey the opinions of the American public. TV presenter: 5,000 men and women mathematically chosen from every walk of American life to make up an accurate microcosm of the entire US population. Narrator: Before this time, surveys had been a lot less scientific. Pollster: How are you going to vote? I'm going to vote for Roosevelt, because I think he's going to bring back the bar. Narrator: The most reputable forecasting of the early 20th century was conducted by the Literary Digest. It asked readers to mail in sample ballots. In 1936, though, the Literary Digest backed Alf Landon to win the presidential election. But Roosevelt ended up winning by a landslide. TV presenter: The great American public has its say at the polls,

and the result is a Roosevelt victory of amazing proportion. Narrator: George Gallup had predicted that result by surveying a wider cross-section of Americans. TV presenter: Today, the true cross-section survey has become a trusted political barometer. Narrator: The Literary Digest went bankrupt, and Gallup's polls became a hit. The Gallup surveys of the 1930s ushered in a new era for polling and for voter confidence in it. Back then, Americans were not only willing but excited to talk to pollsters. It used to be such an honor to be included as one of the special households who got to speak for thousands of Americans. Narrator: In 1948, Time magazine even described Gallup as the Babe Ruth of the polling profession. That same year, Gallup backed the wrong candidate in the presidential race, but his reputation survived. We know that no better method has yet been found for measuring political trends.

Jay: Those were the days when polling was revered. And technology had to catch up with polling, which it finally did in the 1970s. Narrator: Once telephones were widespread in people's homes, pollsters didn't have to go door to door anymore. But there was a downside. Telephone response rates began to fall in the '90s with the invention of caller ID. Some companies eventually transitioned to online surveys that voters can respond to whenever they want. And by the early 2000s, there were more than 5,000 polling organizations in the US. That's when a baseball statistician named Nate Silver analyzed a number of polls and fed them into models that simulated the elections. He used them to come up with forecasts and give the public a glimpse of what Election Day in 2008 could look like. And may God bless the United States of America. Narrator: Silver was able to correctly predict the winner

in every state except for one. Basically, he made polls cool again. But in the 2016 elections, all of this changed. News anchor: Look at how close he is. Right now, he has 257 electoral votes. He needs 13 more. Narrator: It wasn't just a tough night for the news industry, but for pollsters. I had chills when it became clear, whatever it was, 9, 10 o'clock Eastern Time, that this was no layup for Hillary Clinton. Narrator: It was a huge shock. Dr. Wang, you tweeted recently that you were so sure of the result that you'd, put it up on the screen, eat a bug. A lot of people were wrong, but nobody else made the promise I did. Narrator: The polls basically got trashed. But that wasn't totally fair. Polls are not meant to be an exactly perfect prediction of what the eventual vote breakdown is going to be.

And it's normal for the polls to be three to four points off. Narrator: The polls did miss, but not by an unusual amount. They were off by about 4.8 percentage points. That's within half a point of the average error for election polls over the last 50 years. On Election Day, pollsters said that Clinton was leading by about 3.2 percentage points. Clinton did end up winning the popular vote, but by a smaller margin of 2.1 points. And as we all know, she lost the election. What happened was that Trump was able to win the electoral votes in a lot of states where Clinton was leading by a small margin. But fine margins can make a huge difference in the electoral college. Part of the problem was that pollsters were too focused on talking to those who seemed like likely voters based on their past voting history. The people who ended up voting for him are perhaps low-propensity, low-turnout voters.

who would not pass a likely voter screen or just not be reached by a poll at all but did ultimately turn out to vote for him. Narrator: They also didn't factor in education levels. College-educated voters were more likely to vote for Clinton, and they were also more likely to respond to surveys. So by not adjusting the sample, pollsters ended up with a forecast that overestimated support for Clinton. You can end up in a situation where you just miss a big part of the electorate and end up underestimating a campaign's support. Narrator: Ultimately, the results didn't match the scenario the media had hyped up the most. But the reputational damage seemed to be done, and the public started to lose faith. CNN sucks! CNN sucks! Narrator: Pollsters tried to implement a couple of changes in the 2018 midterm elections, like factoring in educated voters, and the forecasts turned out to be correct.

But when 2020 came around, lack of trust was still one of Jay's biggest challenges. Voters were reluctant to answer his questions. How do we draw a sample that actually is random? And we as a profession are struggling right now with how to do that because people do not want to be bothered. They have ways of communicating that are invisible to us. Narrator: Trump voters are less willing to participate in the polls, but not because they're shy. If you have been conditioned for four years by tweet after tweet that says, That poll that shows me, Donald Trump, trailing is a fake poll, you may be reluctant to talk to a pollster. And any poll that the fake news gives you because the real numbers are higher, but any poll they give you is a fake. Narrator: Pollsters did correctly predict that Joe Biden would win the 2020 election, but they again underestimated support for Trump.

One of the states that first started reporting its votes was Florida, where polls had Biden up by a few points but was still expected to be a very close race. As results started coming in, we saw that Trump was over-performing the polls again. Narrator: News organizations chose to represent their predictions in new ways. The New York Times published a table that included a column that read, If polls are as wrong as they were in 2016. And even 538 showed a number of maps to tease the idea of multiple scenarios. Overall, the polls did all right. Grace: Between response rates, coming up with a representative sample, and accounting for the pandemic, given that, it is pretty impressive that polls did predict the right winner. Narrator: They were off by four points. And that's normal by historical standards. More than 100 years after the first poll was conducted, the industry has had to reinvent itself all over again.

Would you mind telling us who you're going to vote for and why? I'm going to vote for Gov. Roosevelt because I think he'll bring back prosperity. I think Hoover deserves another chance. I'm sure he's the best man for that office.

How Election Polls Are Actually Getting Better | Insider Docs | Business Insider

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