HANDICAPPING 2020

IT’S POLL SEASON! Over the next eight months we’ll see hundreds of horserace polls between President Donald Trump and presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden. Here’s a tip. Don’t pay too much attention. The big miss we saw in 2016 can happen again—the coronavirus pandemic could make this election more unpredictable—and there’s only so much pollsters can do about it.

Leading up to the last election, President Trump dismissed polls unfavorable to him as fake news. He was right. Polls missed big in 2016. Pollsters believe they know what went wrong and have fixed it. After the 2018 midterm elections, the industry declared victory when pundits using polling data called most races correctly. Harry Enten of CNN trumpeted, “2018 was a very good year for polls.” Really? Many of the contests were in deep red or blue areas where the outcome was never in doubt. And there were still some big misses. Polls again underestimated Republicans in a handful of states including Florida and, as in 2016, those misses were enough to result in narrow wins in important races. In all, only 80 percent of polls showed the eventual winners leading. That sounds good, but take out the no-brainers, and the hit rate is more like 50–50—in other words, a coin flip.

So far in 2020, poll performance is mixed. Polls missed in South Carolina. They said Biden was ahead by an average of 15 percentage points and he won by 28 percentage points, although perhaps that’s understandable given the rapid consolidation as other candidates dropped out and the huge endorsement from Representative James Clyburn of South Carolina, the third-ranking Democrat in the House. Polls also missed the rise of moderates and fall of progressives, first evident in New Hampshire. Polls were close