Election Polls Significantly Off

The 2020 election was highly anticipated by Democrats, Republicans and people of all political affiliations in-between. With this high anticipation comes the predictions of election polls. The Associated Press has since called the election results in former Vice President and now President-elect Joe Biden´s favor. However, many people say the election was a lot closer than they had expected, according to The New York Times.

“I want to see all the results in, I want to see where those deviations are from pre-election polls and final margins.” Christopher Borick, the director of polling at Muhlenberg College in Pennsylvania, said in an interview in regards to election polls this year.

President Donald Trump’s voting support was far higher than the election polls (some of them being CNBC, The Wall Street Journal and Quinnipiac) had originally concluded, and Trump initially started off in the lead in this election immediately. Mail-in ballots were a huge deciding factor in this election, mainly in Democratic states with larger numbers of mail-in ballots that were counted later. This caused Trump to put out a statement on Twitter the night of the election declaring his win prematurely. 

Many people claim poll underestimation for Trump’s support is due to ¨Shy Trump voters¨ that ended up being late deciders in the election or people who were not vocal about their support for Trump within polls. Both Iowa and Pennsylvania were shown to have underestimated Trump’s support within poll predictions. 

Some deciding states in this election included Georgia, Pennsylvania, Arizona and Michigan. Currently, the electoral votes have been called and are at 306 electoral votes for Biden and 232 for Trump. The popular vote is 51.3% for Biden and 47% for Trump. The official Electoral College results will come out on Dec. 14 after the Electoral College´s meeting. 

Article by Ryleigh Waters of Watkins Mill High School

Graphic by Xiomara Choque of Montgomery College