Pollsters prepare for major changes after presidential election misses – By Steven Shepard (Politico) / May 15, 2022
The discussion among leading pollsters at a recent conference heralds the biggest change in American polling in decades.
CHICAGO — The polling industry is on the precipice of its biggest change in decades, as pollsters try to battle back from consecutive presidential election failures.
Pollsters are increasingly embracing new methods in the run-up to the 2022 midterms after notable misses in recent races. Front of mind is the looming 2024 election cycle, when former President Donald Trump — whose support among the electorate has bedeviled pollsters trying to measure it for the past seven years, including missing low on Trump’s vote before his 2016 win and underestimating the closeness of his 2020 loss — could be on the ballot for the third consecutive presidential election.
Both the internal polling that drives campaigns’ decisions and the media surveys that help shape coverage of the races are already changing: Pollsters are trying new ways to collect data, like contacting potential respondents by text message instead of phone calls, and seeking new ways of adjusting the data after to make it more accurately reflect the whole electorate.
At the American Association for Public Opinion Research’s annual conference here last week, the papers presented and the sideline conversations presaged the biggest change in election polling since Americans began cutting the cord and ditching landlines for cell phones.
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