Pollsters Face Obstacles as 2026 Midterms Approach

With the 2026 Midterm Elections slated for Tuesday, outlets across the spectrum have offered commentary on some of the difficulties and skepticism regarding opinion polling.

From the Center: The Hill (Center bias) published an opinion from Pew Research Center (Center) president Michael Dimock, who laid out several "perennial challenges that are consistently misunderstood" and "slow-growing issues that have compounded the problem over the past decade." Dimock argued it's difficult to determine "who will actually turn out to vote… because people are bad at predicting their own behavior and tend to report aspirations rather than realities." He added that a surge in new polling companies offering low-cost options combined with "a rapid increase in the cost of high-quality polling" had created trust issues and made it harder to have reliable data. This year specifically, Dimock says there are "three new wild cards." They include polling companies overrelying on AI, voter uncertainty about the protocols for voting, and "AI and data centers [swelling] into the public dialogue" without either party having voter sentiments on the issue cornered.

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From the Left: Nate Cohn of The New York Times Opinion (Left) and The Washington Post (Lean Left) both highlighted that polls have previously underestimated support for President Trump. The Post said that since 2020 it and other pollsters have "adopted additional methods to guard against" the "nonresponse bias," and that while it was "effective in reducing errors in 2024… polls still underestimated Trump's support." Cohn also mentioned nonresponse bias and voter turnout as obstacles and said the "recall vote" – how people report voting in the prior election – could play a role too. He wrote, "This year, there's another concern about recall-vote weighting: the possibility that Mr. Trump's voters won't divulge that they supported him. If so, it could mean the polls actually underestimate Democrats."

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From the Right: Blaze Media (Right) published a news story that framed Washington Post's coverage as an admission "there's a BIG problem with election polling" and highlighted the reluctance of Republicans to participate. The outlet also mentioned and linked to some of its other recent coverage of pollsters who have expressed accuracy concerns.

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