In this year’s presidential election, analysis will be as crucial as polling

In this combination of file photos, former Vice President Joe Biden speaks in Wilmington, Del., on March 12, 2020, left, and President Donald Trump speaks at the White House in Washington on April 5, 2020. | Associated Press

My latest polling on this year’s presidential election shows former Vice President Joe Biden leading President Donald Trump by eight percentage points among registered voters (47% to 39%). While those numbers aren’t great for the president, they reflect an improvement from two weeks ago when he trailed by 12.

Still, if the election were held today, the president would lose.

That’s a reality that many of the president’s staunchest supporters refuse to accept. Some reject all polls showing bad news for the president as “Fake News.”

That attitude is fueled by a myth that the polls got Election 2016 completely wrong. In reality, the polls were very good — but the analysis of the polling data was horrible.

Consider the numbers. In 2016, the Real Clear Politics average projected Hillary Clinton would win the popular vote by 3.3 percentage points. She actually won by 2.1 percentage points. Ten of the last twelve national polls released were within two percentage points of the actual margin. One of the others overestimated Clinton’s margin by four points and one underestimated it by four points.

That’s about as accurate a projection as you could hope for!

Despite the accurate polling data, the media narrative completely missed what was happening. Many in the media simply could not imagine a Clinton loss. So they looked at the data and saw what they wanted to see. To some pundits, the only question was how many traditionally Republican states Clinton would win. Hardly anybody thought the reverse could happen.

This failure of polling analysis was not supported by the underlying data. Heading into Election Day, the Real Clear Politics projections showed that Clinton was clearly favored to win just 203 of the needed 270 Electoral College votes. Donald Trump was favored to win 164 and an astounding 171 were in the toss-up category. Reviewing the toss-up states at that time, I noted publicly that it was fairly easy to envision how Trump could reach 263 Electoral College votes.

That reality should have dented the overwhelming confidence of a Clinton victory expressed in the media and political worlds. Polling data showed a race close enough that a surprise in a single traditionally Democratic state could elect Donald Trump. But that possibility was largely ignored in media coverage of the race.

On Election Day, of course, then-candidate Trump stunned the political world by capturing three traditionally Democratic states: Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. Once again, the surprise was more a failure of analysis than public polling. In Pennsylvania, the polling averages showed Clinton ahead by just 1.9 percentage points. In Michigan, she was up just 3.4 points. Both results were clearly in toss-up range. Additionally, in both states, the final public poll released showed Trump ahead.

The only true polling misfire was in Wisconsin, where Clinton was projected to win by 6.5 percentage points and Trump won by just under a point.

The bottom line is that the actual public polling in 2016 was far better than the pundit’s analysis of that polling data. That the pundits ignored the data and got it so wrong should be a warning sign for all who dismiss polls they don’t like as “Fake News.”

So what are the numbers telling us now?

The president is behind at the moment, but this is an especially volatile election year and the outcome is far from certain. The coronavirus pandemic, an economic crisis and tensions surrounding racial inequality are powerful issues that weren’t on anybody’s radar screen at the beginning of the year. And, obviously, we have no way of knowing what they will look like in November. It remains possible for the president to be reelected — and it’s also possible that he will suffer an historic defeat comparable to Herbert Hoover’s loss in the Great Depression.

These issues will determine the outcome in November, but the polls will keep us informed of where things stand. Hopefully, the lessons of 2016 will lead to a more cautious and better analysis of the results in 2020.

Scott Rasmussen is an American political analyst and digital media entrepreneur. He is the author of “The Sun is Still Rising: Politics Has Failed But America Will Not.”

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