Now that almost all of the ballots for the 2024 election have been counted, we can thoroughly assess how well the national and battleground polls performed this year.
The conclusion: Despite their flaws, they were more correct than incorrect, particularly in light of the difficulties and previous failures of the polling industry.
First, let’s look at the presidential horse race results. Kamala Harris and Donald Trump were equal at 49% each in the latest national NBC News poll, while the national RealClearPolitics average for the two-way race was 48.7% for Harris and 48.6% for Trump. Additionally, the New York Times averaged Trump at 48% and Harris at 49%.
As of right now, the actual outcome of the popular vote is as follows, albeit it may somewhat alter during the final ballot count: Harris 48.3%, Trump 49.9%.
According to historical data from the Pew Research Center, the 2024 national polls produced one of the strongest results in presidential polling over the previous ten years, even if they marginally undervalued support for Trump and slightly inflated support for Harris on average.
Additionally, it was unquestionably superior to polling’s disastrous 2020 miss.
Although their mistakes were marginally greater than those observed in the national polling, the battleground surveys were likewise not far off the mark.
The mistaken belief that political horse race polls can be accurate measurements, such as 49%-48% or 50%-48% results, can accurately predict who will win a contest and by how much, is more likely to be the cause of the perception that the polls were incorrect in 2024 than the actual level of polling error.
Expecting political polls to be so accurate has become a foolish endeavor due to polling margins of error, historically low voter response rates, varying assumptions about the electorate, and yes, previous polling failures.
To put it another way, those 49%-48% and 50%-48% statistics just indicate that the contest is close.
And that’s precisely what happened both nationally and in the major battlegrounds during the presidential election.
What else the polls got right
In addition to indicating that the 2024 presidential election would be unpredictable and close, the polls accurately captured the political climate that influenced the race.
A large portion of the electorate believed that the country was going in the wrong direction, and Joe Biden, the incumbent president, had an approval rating in the low 40s, which is historically dangerous for the party in power.
According to the NBC News Exit Poll, only 40% of respondents approved of Biden’s job performance, while 73% of voters expressed anger or dissatisfaction with the direction the country was taking.
Many of the major demographic variables that ultimately shaped the 2024 election were also predicted by the polls, such as Trump’s increases among Latino voters.
CNBC/Telemundo/TheNBC News Long before the election, studies indicating Trump’s rise included Latino polls. Biden and Democrats’ relative difficulties with young voters, especially among young males, in comparison to previous recent elections were also noted early in many polls.
In the 2024 election, the polls also largely correctly identified Republican downballot candidates who had been trailing Trump in the polls and Democratic downballot candidates who had been routinely outperforming Biden (when he was in the race) and Harris (after she was nominated).
In spite of Harris’ defeat in Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, and Wisconsin, Democratic Senate candidates prevailed in four of those states during the election.
What the polls got wrong
But when it came to Trump’s support among men and Harris’s support among women, the polls—including the one conducted by NBC News—made a mistake by exaggerating the gender disparity.
Trump won males by 13 points and Harris by 8 points, a 21-point gender margin that was in line with recent presidential elections, according to the exit poll. That was less than the gender gap that had been observed in the NBC News poll, which was more than 30 points.
(However, when paired with race and education, there was a huge gender gap: Trump defeated white males without college degrees by 40 points, while Harris defeated white women with college degrees by 16 points, resulting in a staggering 56-point difference between the two groups.)
Most importantly, although not as much as in 2020, the polls once again underestimated Trump’s popularity. In an effort to avoid missing Trump’s supporters, polling companies adjusted their calculations and adopted new weighting techniques.
Despite the fact that many contests in 2016 and 2020 ended in a tie, this was the first presidential cycle in which numerous polls showed Trump either ahead or almost tied.
The mixed record on party ID
One of the most significant differences in the 2024 polling was that, according to national surveys (such as those from NBC, CNBC, and The Wall Street Journal), Republicans had a stronger party affiliation than Democrats.
Although it was within the margin of error, the latter set of polls often had Harris ahead of Trump.
However, the exit poll ultimately showed that Republicans did had the party ID lead.
The fact that more people identified as Republicans than Democrats was a significant story in the 2024 election.
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