"Pollsters: 'Impossible' to say why 2020 polls were wrong" - Could It Be Voter Suppression?

[TomCADem]

In 2016 and 2020, even as we see increasingly desperate efforts by Republicans to make voting difficult through redistricting and voter suppression, all we hear is that pollster are suddenly underestimating Republican support. For example, in Houston, Texas, Governor Abbot reduced the number of ballot drop boxes for the Houston area, which has a population of over 3,000,000 to just one, which is the same number as the smallest county in Texas.

Despite this, we have Republicans doubling and tripling down on voter suppression in an effort to make voting downright miserable. For example, making illegal to give water to people standing in line to vote, which will probably adversely impact more populated areas.

I bet that if polls and vote results once again diverge in favor of Republicans, we will again see the stories where pollster just have no idea why Democrats did so bad relative to polling. Well, could it be that one of the key assumptions of polling is that people who want to vote a certain way, can actually cast a ballot?

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/pollsters-impossible-to-say-why-2020-polls-were-wrong/ar-AAMiOI2?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=U531

A new, highly anticipated report from the leading association of pollsters confirms just how wrong the 2020 election polls were. But nine months after that closer-than-expected contest, the people asking why are still looking for answers.

National surveys of the 2020 presidential contest were the least accurate in 40 years, while the state polls were the worst in at least two decades, according to the new, comprehensive report from the American Association for Public Opinion Research.

ut unlike 2016, when pollsters could pinpoint factors like the education divide as reasons they underestimated Donald Trump and offer specific recommendations to fix the problem, the authors of the new American Association for Public Opinion Research report couldn’t put their finger on the exact problem they face now. Instead, they've stuck to rejecting the idea that they made the same mistakes as before, while pointing to possible new reasons for inaccuracy.

“We could rule some things out, but it’s hard to prove beyond a certainty what happened,” said Josh Clinton, a professor at Vanderbilt University and the chair of the association’s 2020 election task force. “Based on what we know about polling, what we know about politics, we have some good prime suspects as to what may be going on.”

[ColinC]

1. No. I think we had some of the highest turnotu we've seen.

COVID, however, did suppress the our base when it comes to the ground game.

[Amishman]

4. Agreed, the Pubs relative success in blue states as well says this is more complicated

Than just voter suppression in red states

I keep harping on this but I think a lot of us want to overlook it - the Pubs brand did better than Trump himself. Down ballot was stronger for them in most areas, and they gained House seats in blue states like CA and NY.

There is a widening cultural divide, one aspect of the other side is they hate and distrust the media (among others). Their mindset leaves them biased against answering polls.

[andym]

2. Article: Most plausible theory is that voters reached by polls are different than those not reached

From the article:

"The most plausible — yet still unproven — theory is that the voters the polls are reaching are fundamentally different from those they are not. And Trump’s rantings about the polls being “fake” or rigged only exacerbate that problem.

“If the voters most supportive of Trump were least likely to participate in polls then the polling error may be explained as follows: Self-identified Republicans who choose to respond to polls are more likely to support Democrats and those who choose not to respond to polls are more likely to support Republicans,” the report reads. “Even if the correct percentage of self-identified Republicans were polled, differences in the Republicans who did and did not respond could produce the observed polling error.”

[underpants]

5. The second paragraph is the key. Republicans have a real distrust of media and polls

They are much less likely to participate in polls.

I would think that in a POTUS poll there should be some way to add to the incumbent simply because they are the incumbent. Name, visibility, standing behind the seal all provide a known advantage. Trump on the other hand negated that and then some. Familiarity with him is a negative regardless of how great of a salesman his bubble believes he is when he says it. Still you have a known quantity vs an unknown.

[Steven Maurer]

3. Simple answer: not all evil people admit it

And understand, deep in their hearts, they know they're being evil. So when pollsters contact a certain percentage of these people, they simply decline to respond, and this biases the results.

This has been a known effect with black candidates since basically forever. The poll support is 6-9 points higher than the actual support. It doesn't happen with whites holding the same exact positions.

[Deminpenn]

6. Recently heard an interesting take on this

Can't recall the cable guest who said it, but the gist was that Trump was focused on pulling in voters from the "fever swamp". Thus the shift in rhetoric to crazy conspiracy theories and other nutty ideas meant to appeal to these people and bring them out to vote. Now nearly the entire GOP has latched on to this strategy. That would certainly explain how Trump managed to increase turnout of his voters despite everything arrayed against him.

[uponit7771]

7. ***NO DEVELOPED COUNTRY PUTS UP WITH POLLSTERS AS BAD AS THESE IN US !!***

Pollsters, " sooooo, yeah we got it wrong in a major area this time too but believe us next time k?"

No ... pollsters in the US don't want to correctly weight GQP voter denial and nullification so they can stay "nuetral" cause they falsly think voter denial and nullification is a black thing and they'll be around if the GQP gets back in power