Pollster and political operative Frank Luntz issued a warning to his colleagues in the polling industry about the 2020 election: If President Trump wins again, they can kiss their jobs goodbye.
“If the pollsters get it wrong this time, they’re done,” Luntz told longtime talk show host Larry King on Friday. “The industry is done. The profession is done. They were so clear in declaring Hillary Clinton as the winner in 2016, and they were wrong, and now, they’re doing the same thing with Joe Biden in 2020. If Donald Trump can come back and confound the experts, the polling profession is finished as a profession.”
Trump has been trailing behind his Democratic challenger, Biden, in national and state polls for months and continues to trail with just four days left until Election Day on Tuesday.
Public trust in polling fell after Trump defied the predictions of pollsters, pundits, and election analysts in his victory over Clinton in 2016. The president himself has been critical of polls, especially ones that show him behind, often calling them “fake” or “suppression” polls that depress voters away from casting their ballot for him.
However, Dave Wasserman, House editor for the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, said polling in 2020 has major differences to the ones in 2016, and he’s more confident they’re accurate in predicting a victory for Biden.
Among the differences Wasserman noted include Biden’s lead, which is far larger and more stable than Clinton’s was at the same point in the campaign cycle, there are fewer undecided and third-party voters this year, and state and district-level polls are matching national ones.
“In the end, the only certainty in the polling world is some degree of error,” Wasserman wrote in an NBC News analysis on Tuesday. “There’s no guarantee 2020’s errors will boost Trump again or adhere to the Southwest/Midwest patterns we observed in 2016 and 2018.”
Luntz added that he’s disappointed in both candidates’ ability to dodge critical questions about how they would lead the country.
“Both candidates are being rewarded for not being detailed,” Luntz said. “Donald Trump still doesn’t have a clear COVID plan because he keeps denying its significance, and Joe Biden will not tell voters what he’s going to do with the Supreme Court or the filibuster because he knows it will alienate either his base or swing voters.”
Luntz said pollsters are telling him that the undecided voters in 2020 are most likely Trump voters who are torn between choosing his policies that they favor or Biden’s personality, which they prefer to Trump’s boisterous style.
“They’re telling me now that the undecideds happen to be Trump voters who like what he’s done but don’t like how he did it,” Luntz said. “They like his agenda but don’t really like him versus a Joe Biden, where they like him very much. They’ve become accustomed to him and [are] very positive in reaction to him as a person, but not so positive to his agenda, which they’re not sure that they know.”
Overall, Luntz said 2020 should be a slightly closer election than 2016.
“[The] margins against Trump are significant,” Luntz said. “I don’t see how they’re overcome.”
