Have Midterm Polls Underestimated Donald Trump?

Nate Silver says midterm polls have not consistently underestimated Donald Trump. The misses people remember are the presidential years, 2016, 2020, and 2024, when the polls were low on Trump and Democrats were left thinking of Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden. The two Trump-era midterms went the other way. 2018 was one of the most accurate polling years on record, and 2022 was accurate too.

A shared error can still decide the Senate. Ask what happens if the Senate polls are off by three or four points in the same direction in every race. Democrats hold a lot of leads of about three points, including in Ohio and Texas, and a miss of that size could leave the majority waiting on ranked-choice voting in Alaska. The House is the sharper test. If Democrats did not win it, both the polls and the country's politics would be in question. In New Jersey and Virginia last year, the error ran the other way: the polls were five to ten points low on Democrats.