US election results: How did opinion polls undercount Trump voters again?
Al Jazeera
It’s the third consecutive election in which opinion polls have underestimated Trump’s support.
Ahead of the United States presidential elections on Tuesday, public opinion polls had predicted a neck-and-neck race between Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris.
Yet eventually, Trump cruised to a comfortable victory, defying most polls. He has already won five of the seven swing states – Pennsylvania, Georgia, North Carolina, Michigan and Wisconsin – and appears poised to win the remaining two, Arizona and Nevada. Most of these wins are by margins larger than the polls had forecast.
And, while most pollsters had predicted a narrowing margin between Harris and Trump in the popular vote, almost all showed Harris ahead. In the end, Trump is on course to not just win the popular vote – but to do so by a margin of close to 5 million votes. That’s a win no Republican can boast of since George HW Bush in 1988.
Overall, Trump has already won 295 Electoral College votes, comfortably more than the 270 needed to win, while Harris won 226. If he wins Arizona and Nevada as is predicted, Trump will end up with 312 Electoral College votes.
So how did the opinion polls go wrong – so wrong?
