US election: Opinion pollsters were the biggest losers. It's time to call them out

'Neck-and-neck' was the keyword ahead of the November 5 elections in the US, with most opinion pollsters predicting a tight race between Democrat Kamala Harris and Republican Donald Trump. When the dust settled, Trump not only emerged the winner with a considerable margin in electoral votes but also got the popular vote. His Republican party went on to take the majority in both the Senate and House of Representatives, thus sweeping the power trifecta of the world's oldest democracy.

Watch -  USA News: Disappointed Americans Consider Moving Abroad After Elections Result

The pre-election opinion polling, while most of it appeared uniform, was practically one-sided.

The polling results were used by left-liberal and pro-Harris media to bolster her candidacy, arguing that the incumbent vice president is 'doing well' among key voting populations like women, the youth and minorities.

Going into the results night, there was optimism in many news studios aligned with Democrats, but the mood quickly changed as Trump went way ahead way early, winning some swing states besides the usual red states.

CNN anchor John King, famous for his enthusiastic fast-paced result analysis using the US map on a screen dubbed 'magic wall', appeared less exuberant as the results poured in, a scene vastly different from his presentation in 2020 when Biden won.

Much before the final results, he said, "Donald Trump is knocking on the door", adding “He’s going to get there.”

There was a meltdown in the unabashedly pro-Harris MSNBC studio. Anchors and panellists at NBC News, ABC News and CBS News, the other major networks generally seen as favouring Democrats, had a worried and dull look on their faces when announcing the results. The focus immediately turned to discussing how horrible a Trump presidency would be. 

Several of them shifted their anger to 'misinformation', blaming Trump backer Elon Musk's social media platform X and conspiracy theories spread by Trump surrogates as reasons for the former president's unassailable victory.

All this amounts to telling the majority of American voters that they are dumb. 

But it can be argued that it was the opinion pollsters who tried to misguide and make a fool of the voters by peddling the lie that it was a 'neck-and-neck' race.

Ahead of the election, the FiveThirtyEight website, which tracks the mood of the nation, put Harris ahead of Trump after compiling the last batch of opinion polls. 

But the difference was minor: she was ahead at 48 per cent while Trump was at 46.8 per cent.

Among these pollsters, NPR-PBS News, Harris X-Forbes [no relation to Kamala Harris or X] and Ipsos-Reuters gave the highest favourability points to Harris, between 51 and 50 per cent. Only AtlasIntel and ActiVote gave similar percentages to Trump.

On the question of whether voters wanted Republicans or Democrats in Congress, the average of all polls tracked by FiveThirtyEight gave Democrats the edge at 46.3 per cent as against 45.6 per cent for the Republicans. That was proven wrong in the final count.

Interestingly, even Democrat-aligned pollsters found that more people have an unfavourable opinion of Kamala Harris - 48 per cent as opposed to a favourable opinion of 46 per cent. 

In their calculations, Trump was seen as unfavourable by nearly 60 per cent of respondents as opposed to 44 per cent that found him favourable.

Come election night, most if not all of these observations fell flat in the face of reality.

The punters and financial markets, overall, had more accuracy in predicting the election win for Trump than pollsters, who apparently use 'scientific' methods and mathematical models to reach their conclusions. 

Also read: US media suggests Trump’s lead in betting markets could be ‘manufactured’

What could have gone wrong?

Americans who voted for Trump and his Republican party are not fools or 'garbage' as President Joe Biden once characterised them. 

They have voted out an unpopular government. 

They voted for issues that mattered to them the most: jobs, cost of living and illegal immigration, among other things.

It is as simple as that.

Also read: US election: Opinion poll shows Harris holds narrow lead over Trump, but razor-thin edge starting to fray

The pollsters failed to assess the public mood on the ground, particularly that of the silent majority.

In their surveying, they may have been talking to the converted, which gave the false impression that Democrats are either leading or giving tough competition to Republicans.

This leaves open several questions on their methodology. How are they collecting data? Who are they approaching with survey questions? Are their survey respondents providing truthful information? Are they always talking to the same people, populations or community groups to create their data sets?

It is not the first time that opinion pollsters, who have had a significant impact on the elections since they came into prominence in 1976, have gone wrong.

But the suspicion now is: which of these pollsters are politically aligned to one party or the other? Could such tacit alliances be leading to lopsided polling that is skewed in favour of the party of their choice?

The lack of accountability, and short public memory, is quite disturbing when it comes to opinion polling and those who conduct them.

With such a wide error margin between their projections and the actual outcome, shouldn't such opinion polling also come under mis/disinformation, the pet term used by left-liberal media to bash Trump?

This is a grey area. Not many strict laws have been implemented on conflict of interest in companies or news organisations doing opinion polling. 

But it is high time that they are called out.

Disclaimer: The views of the writer do not represent the views of WION or ZMCL. Nor does WION or ZMCL endorse the views of the writer.