What Joe Biden Did Right

2. Polls suck

Congrats to every pollster on your new F-minus rating.

After four years of reworking their models to correct a major polling error concentrated in the Midwest states, and to make sure they’re capturing Trump voters in that region, well, some news: Our gold-star pollsters ate it again! Relative to the FiveThirtyEight forecasts—and this isn’t really the forecasters’ issue, it’s that of the pollsters who input the data—the margin was well off in Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Florida. (Georgia pollsters did a good job!) Senate and House polling was a catastrophe. Maine Sen. Susan Collins, who never led a public poll all year, won comfortably, while House Republicans are poised to pick up about the same number of seats that House Democrats were projected to pick up. There was never any indication of this happening in district polling, generic congressional ballot polling, Republican polling, or Democratic polling. The polling industry cannot figure out how to account for Trump surge voters. If Trump runs again in 2024 (ha-ha, but also… why not?) and the Esteemed University Institute of Polling Sciences and Maths says, Hmm, yes, Wisconsin, Trump is down exactly 24 points, please know that it will be within a point either way.

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