What polls can’t tell us about the midterm elections

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With eight hours until Election Day — at least on the East Coast — Democrats may now be feeling good about their electoral chances.

The party is heavily favored to win seats in the House and make huge gains in the Senate, with a good chance of retaking both chambers. The final New York Times/Siena poll released Sunday showed Democrats leading Republicans at least in the seven battleground states that decide Senate seats. That includes Kansas and Texas, two states that haven’t elected a Democratic senator in generations.

The situation looks so bleak for Republicans that even President Donald Trump seemed to admit it in a speech this afternoon: “For some reason, the current president didn’t win the midterms. We gave it a lot of credit.”

But while many polls and pundits are predicting a blue wave…I’m small Be more cautious about making firm predictions. Voting has become increasingly difficult to vote in recent years, and we saw this especially clearly during the 2016 and 2020 elections.

The voting method sounds complicated. (It is!) But one of the biggest challenges in the field is actually easy to master: Some people love chatting with pollsters and filling out little surveys on their phones… and some people don’t care.

Voters tend to be older, more educated, and more invested in politics. People who avoid voting tend to be younger, less educated and more likely to have supported Trump in the recent presidential campaign. Pollsters are aware of these imbalances and try to correct them after the fact through statistical adjustments, but it’s not a perfect science.

For example, it’s difficult to measure how Republicans who respond to polls differ from Republicans who don’t. And it’s impossible to know for sure how many people who say they want to vote will actually drag themselves to the nearest school gym or fire hall tomorrow.

This year also brought some new wrinkles. According to the Washington Post, pollsters are conducting fewer late-stage surveys than typical midterm surveys. Not only does this mean we have less data overall, but the data we do have may not explain recent developments, such as Democratic Rep. Haley Stevens’ unexpected support for Republicans in Michigan’s Senate race, or the ballot scandal in Alaska.

Several close Senate races are also taking place in rural states — such as Alaska, Maine and Iowa — where getting a representative mix of voters is particularly difficult for pollsters.

But even if the polls are correct and a blue wave is possible, that doesn’t mean it will actually happen. My colleague Astead Herndon sees another possibility: Fear of a liberal takeover could prompt large numbers of Republicans to vote, even if they are unhappy with Trump or had previously planned to sit out the election.

This is not to say that the blue wave accustomed to To be clear, this will happen, or it won’t, as some experts predict. But I’m not going to run any victory laps yet. Opinion polls are not the same as elections.

➨ Be prepared for political battles with your family. After all, it’s an election year tradition! Rather than snapping back at dissident relatives, try to be curious about their position. When in doubt, use the phrase “Why is this important to you?” Then use “I” statements to explain your own perspective, rather than put down or accuse.