2024 US Election: Trump Clinches Surprise Victory, Pollsters Stumped.
In a stunning turn of events, the 2024 US presidential race saw a surprising outcome, as Republican candidate Donald Trump emerged victorious in a decisive fashion, defying the predictions of a tight contest with his Democratic opponent, Kamala Harris.
As the election unfolded, the predictions made by opinion polls quickly fell short of reality, with Trump displaying surging support across multiple demographics and regions, a stark contrast to the narrow margins that had been anticipated.
“They did fine in battlegrounds, but…they failed to provide the essential information that Trump was surging across the board,” said Michael Bailey, a political science professor at Georgetown University, highlighting the pollsters’ inability to accurately gauge the Republican candidate’s growing popularity.
Delving deeper into the reasons behind the pollsters’ missteps, experts point to the persistent challenge of tracking a core segment of Trump’s electorate that remains reluctant to participate in opinion surveys.
“Polls significantly underestimated Trump’s growth among Hispanic voters,” noted Pedro Azevedo, Head of US polling at AtlasIntel, adding that the former president also outperformed expectations among white voters, particularly in rural areas.
Furthermore, the inability to accurately gauge the impact of late-deciding voters and those who opted not to disclose their voting preferences also contributed to the pollsters’ downfall.
J Ann Selzer, the author of an inaccurate poll in Iowa, acknowledged that “the late deciders could have opted for Trump in the final days of the campaign” and that “the people who had already voted but opted not to tell our interviewers for whom they voted could have given Trump an edge.”
As the dust settles on the 2024 election, the polling industry faces yet another reckoning, grappling with the challenge of accurately capturing the nuances of the American electorate and the shifting political landscape that has repeatedly eluded their predictions.
