GOP Pollster Frank Luntz was "kind of exaggerating" with his claim that the polling profession is done after so many surveys were proven wrong with their predictions of a win by a large margin for Joe Biden, FiveThirtyEight founder and Editor-in-Chief Nate Silver said Thursday.
"We know that in a lot of states the result is changing from what it was initially on election night," Silver told ABC News' "Good Morning America" while stressing he's not a pollster. "When you compare the final results, it will take a couple of weeks in some states. The polls [will] get 48 or 49 of the 50 states right and come a little low on Biden's popular vote, so I think in the light of day it's going to be a mediocre year for the polls but where they pointed [was] towards Biden's win."
That doesn't mean he thinks the polls were perfect, as many "clearly underestimated" President Donald Trump in some key states.
"One big change here is that you have so many more ways to vote, people voting by mail, so maybe votes can be spoiled, meaning you fill out the ballot incorrectly when you send it in, maybe some were lost," said Silver. "I don't think that's enough to explain all of it, but a new factor they're dealing with and something we have to look into and account for."
Silver, whose website uses polling for its election forecast, said polling is now different from how it was in years past, with many people having low trust in the government and not answering polls quite as often.
"Not that Trump supporters deceive a pollster or lie about who they're supporting, but they won't pick up the phone and that can be a problem," Silver said. "Again, we don't know. Pollsters thought they'd fix it by doing weighting, but if you miss, you want to miss not in the same direction twice in a row."
He said there will be many questions that need to be asked, but by using probability, some differences can be understood.
"The reason Biden hung on in states like Michigan and Wisconsin, he was far enough ahead where you can have a polling error and still win narrowly, which was not true for Hillary Clinton," said Silver.
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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