Longtime pollster Frank Luntz blamed inaccurate poll projections on a lack of engagement with Trump voters who “think it’s all part of the swamp.”
National polls predicted a huge sweep for Democratic nominee Joe Biden, as well as a Democratic flip for the GOP-controlled Senate.
“Trump voters don’t like participating in surveys,” Luntz told Fox News host Bill Hemmer on Thursday. “They think that the information is going to be used against them. They think that it’s all part of the swamp. They think that it’s part of CNN or the New York Times. And the only time that they’ll participate is if they know they’re having an impact. They know that the people in Washington are actually listening to them rather than ignoring them or forgetting them. So, it’s really hard to do accurate polling when you’ve got a segment of the population that simply refuses to participate.”
He added: “But good for them. They have the right to know that they’re being heard.”
Republicans are now poised to hold onto their Senate majority, with several of the lawmakers previously considered at-risk handily winning their reelections. Republicans also picked up several House seats in swing states, including two from South Florida, which went to Democrats in 2018.
The race between Biden and President Trump is still up in the air as several states continue to count votes. Though Biden remains in the lead, pollsters inaccurately predicted that the former vice president would win by high margins in battleground states, including Wisconsin. One ABC/Washington Post poll projected Biden would win by 17 points in Wisconsin, where he won by less than 1%, a margin that makes Trump eligible to request a recount. A move his campaign stated it would pursue.
“The Washington Post got Wisconsin wrong by 16 points,” Luntz said. “CNN, your competitor network, declared last weekend that Joe Biden was going to win by 12 points. It looks like he will get a 3.5% advantage over Donald Trump when all the votes are counted.”
Less than a week before Election Day, Luntz said the polling industry would be finished if the experts’ calculations fell short again, especially if Trump defied polls again like he did in 2016, when Hillary Clinton was strongly projected to win.
“The public polls and the press has never been as wrong as it was this time,” Luntz said. “They should have known better because they got it wrong four years ago.”
