‘Nonresponse Bias’ and ‘Some Very Red Terrain’ Has Democrats Hedging on Hopes for a Blue Wave

Concerns about the reliability of polling data are dampening Democratic hopes for a blue wave. Wary of counting their eggs too soon, some are warning that President Trump’s Republicans have paths to defying the odds on Tuesday, led by the so-called “shy Trump voters.”Friday on Semafor’s “Mixed Signals” podcast, the pollster who called every state right in 2012 for President Obama, Nate Silver, offered a “cynical interpretation.” He called 2016, when only polling by Los AngelesTimes/USC predicted Mr. Trump’s victory, “a permanent scar on everybody’s mental map,” meaning Democrats let down by promises of a landslide win.In 1948, the shoe was on the GOP’s foot, immortalized by President Truman holding aloft the Chicago Daily Tribune. “Dewey Defeats Truman,” read the front-page headline. A strike by typesetters prompted the paper’s editors to call the race for Truman’s challenger, Governor Thomas Dewey, who was leading in early returns, which seemed to confirm polling data.“People,” Mr. Silver said, “should always be concerned about the possibility of a systematic polling error.” Despite “how advanced” polling models have become, there are “still ways” they could miss. NBC News analysis in December 2024 found that polls “understated” Mr. Trump’s “support in virtually every state.”On Saturday, a Politico poll conducted by PF Global found that “only 25 percent of Americans” think “political surveys correctly estimate votes.” Mr. Silver said that the outcome on Tuesday “is a genuinely uncertain question, because even though the background environment is very good for Democrats,” the party’s candidates “have to summit some very red terrain.”“It would not shock me at all if” Democrats, Mr. Silver said, endure “death by a thousand cuts where they lose Maine by a point and maybe” their Texas candidate, James Talarico “wins.” But in Michigan, Abdul “El-Sayed loses or whatever permutations, right? Republicans still have a lot of winning combinations.” He didn’t “want to provide” what he called “subjective vibes.”Mr. Silver said that polls had underestimated GOP turnout in 2016 and 2020. However, those were presidential elections with Mr. Trump on the ballot. Although the president has urged his supporters to “pretend I’m on the ballot” at several rallies, he’s not, and his approval ratings are at an all-time low.Since this is a midterm election, Mr. Silver suggested that better comparisons would be 2018 and 2022, when pollsters did not overestimate Republicans. The “red wave” that the GOP hoped for in the latter year, under President Biden, didn’t come ashore. The Republicans captured the House but Democrats held onto the Senate.There is also the complication of Mr. Trump’s shy voters. The factor, which this columnist wrote about last week in The New York Sun, contributes to what’s known as partisan non-response bias where citizens refuse to participate in surveys. Computer models have been trying to compensate since the phenomenon emerged in 2016, the Pew Research Center wrote in September.Pollsters and the organizations that report them are so concerned about the lack of reliable data that they’re hedging their bets. On Sunday, the New York Times released its poll predicting a romp for Democrats but added a caveat that “the persistence of … nonresponse bias introduces the risk of a systematic polling error like those in 2016 or 2020.”Democrats, the Times reported, “are once again responding to Times/Siena polls at a much higher rate than Republicans. Across these final battleground polls, registered white Democrats were about 30 percent likelier to take the poll than registered white Republicans. That’s actually a bit higher than in the final polls in 2020.”Mr. Silver said that “whichever party is more enthusiastic, their people are more likely to answer phone calls. But that’s a mixed bag because, in some sense, taking a poll is a proxy for voting, right? You know, if Republican respondents aren’t responding, then are they going to vote?”Due to the unreliability of polling since Mr. Trump arrived on the scene, Democrats are wise to curb their expectations, and Republicans not to let theirs be dampened. Americans decide the fate of the nation in elections. Sometimes, they fulfill the predictions of computers and surveys. Other times, they leave Governor Dewey whistling “Hail to the Chief” too soon.

‘Nonresponse Bias’ and ‘Some Very Red Terrain’ Has Democrats Hedging on Hopes for a Blue Wave

‘Nonresponse Bias’ and ‘Some Very Red Terrain’ Has Democrats Hedging on Hopes for a Blue Wave

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