Democrats’ shock, reminiscent of 2016, at former President Donald Trump’s Tuesday resounding victory has yet again underscored America’s media, and polling, fault line.
Surprise among Democrats and leftists at Trump’s prevailing over Kamala Harris’ frail campaign is a product of misunderstanding the opponent: Trump’s real foe, to say nothing of the lawfare against him, which the American people rejected Tuesday, was a media and Democrat money complex committed not to democracy, but Trump's defeat. And the polls often showed it.
The manufactured energy for Harris’ campaign, and Democrats’ breathless, dangerous, and false chants of “fascism” were a bitter disservice to Americans that biased polls also reflected.
RealClearPolitics’ poll average, a relatively neutral aggregate of other pollsters, showed Harris instantaneously surging ahead of Trump after Democrats catapulted her toward the Democratic National Convention nomination. That energy may or may not have been authentic at the time, but as polls crept toward a dead heat leading into the contest, most generated more heat than light.
Famed pollster Nate Silver’s former outfit, 538, which was acquired by Disney-parented ABC News last year, forecasted a 1.2-point Harris victory. Silver, one of the polling game’s leading lights in his time and a darling of Democrats, declared the race a tossup running his own models.
As Americans have broken up with cable news, is the polling industry on life support, too?
Nevertheless, signs of Trump’s win were there among pollsters committed to trying to match the map to the actual lay of the land — and a few stand out.
2020’s most accurate pollster, AtlasIntel, this year called every state and Trump’s 312 electoral votes to a tee.
The final AtlasIntel polling map was 100% accurate. pic.twitter.com/d3c9Lk3LUg
— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) November 7, 2024
Rasmussen Reports came within half a point of calling the popular vote, compared with 538’s five and a half point flop. Notably, Rasmussen was dismissed from 538’s election models.
So wait, 538 who kicked us out, had a 5.5 point popular vote miss?
Ours is <0.5%
— Mark Mitchell, Rasmussen Reports (@Mark_R_Mitchell) November 7, 2024
The cream that has risen to the top in election forecasting may have remarkably been betting markets, lauded because participants have skin in the game in a different way than a pollster commissioned by an interest group or media outlet might. Betting market Polymarket, too, called the electoral map perfectly.
🎯 pic.twitter.com/qGh0kFKS4N
— Polymarket (@Polymarket) November 6, 2024
A French trader made a reported $85 million trading on the U.S. presidential outcome, commissioning his own “neighbor polls” to guide the bet. Neighbor polls use an alternate methodology, asking respondents not their selection, but who they think their neighbors will vote for.
AI-driven social media analysis also delivered the goods on forecasting a Trump win.
In any event, just as Americans have broken up with mainstream media, traditional methods of prognosticating election outcomes are appearing dusty, save top pollsters such as AtlasIntel and Rasmussen.
Insofar as Tuesday’s landslide was a referendum on lawfare against Trump, it was also a referendum on America’s “vertically integrated” media, polling, and consent-manufacturing machine. The genie was already out of the bottle for Americans who saw the signs. Will others who awoke to shock and dismay Wednesday morning see them too?
