What to Do When Polls Are Weird

Midterm numeracy.

I know we’ve had some big polling misses in primaries recently, and that has everyone on edge,” G. Elliott Morris, a journalist and pollster who writes a Substack called Strength in Numbers, told me. Polls showed wide leads for progressive candidates in some key Democratic primaries over the summer: Abdul El-Sayed was predicted to win Michigan’s Democratic Senate primary by double digits but only eked out a victory. Francesca Hong’s big lead in Wisconsin’s gubernatorial primary turned into a loss for the Democratic Socialists. Peggy Flanagan, a progressive from Minnesota, beat her opponent by nearly twenty points despite polls calling the race “deadlocked.” These misses drew national headlines questioning whether polls have gotten less credible, and whether we are in for more of the same inaccuracy in the general elections, too.