Trafalgar Group chief pollster Robert Cahaly says polls are getting it wrong because people are scared they will be CANCELED if they admit to being conservative
- Robert Cahaly spoke to Sean Hannity about polls getting the election so wrong
- Cahaly is chief pollster at Trafalgar Group which correctly predicted 2016
- He said people are scared they will be canceled if they reveal they are voting for Donald Trump
- Most national polls appeared to show Joe Biden with a commanding lead over Donald Trump going into Election Day
Trafalgar Group chief pollster Robert Cahaly has insisted major polls are wrong because people are scared they will be canceled if they reveal they are voting for Donald Trump.
Cahaly, whose polling company correctly predicted a Republican victory in 2016, explained what happened after Sean Hannity listed polls that got it ‘dead wrong’.
The pollster told the Fox News host: ‘I think they haven’t adjusted. They talked about how they adjusted the model but they really didn’t.
‘They haven’t made accommodations for the fact that people just don’t want to give their information out – that they are hesitant to say how they feel. And in this day and age, where people are shamed for their political opinions and canceled and all that nonsense, people just want to play their cards close to their chest.’
Tucker Carlson also addressed the issue of pollsters on his show, asking journalist Brit Hume – who called 2016 for Trump – why experts who got it wrong four years ago are still appearing on television.
Trafalgar Group chief pollster Robert Cahaly has insisted major polls are wrong because people are scared they will be canceled if they reveal they are voting for Donald Trump
Tucker Carlson pointed to the way many experts said in 2016 that there was no way Donald Trump could win the election
Most major national polls showed Joe Biden with a commanding lead over Donald Trump going into Election Day
‘It’s mainly because they attract an audience of people who feel the same way they do,’ Hume shot back, to nods from Carlson.
He added: ‘Bias makes people stupid. And if you don’t acknowledge to yourself, an own your biases, then they will make you stupid over and over again.’
Cahaly added: ‘You have to figure out a way around that and to get to the real answers, and you have to build some trust and get some anonymity, and they just haven’t figured it out.
‘They said they adjusted. But we saw in Florida in 2018 they got it all wrong there too and we got it right. So I wasn’t very surprised.’
In 2020, opinion pollsters have once again proved badly wrong in the US Presidential election, four years after Hillary Clinton was widely predicted to win and lost.
Polls held just before election day this time around gave Joe Biden an average lead of ten points nationally, and narrower leads in swing states, which all-but evaporated on the day itself.
Nationally, Biden was predicted to lead Donald Trump by 52 per cent to 42 per cent, according to polls.
In fact, Biden has taken around 50 per cent while Trump has taken 48 per cent, with many ballots still left to be counted.
Among the most inaccurate state polls were an ABC-Washington Post poll that gave Biden a 17-point lead in Wisconsin. In fact, Biden won the state with just 49.5 per cent to Trump’s 48.9 per cent.
Meanwhile a Quinnipac poll gave Biden a five-point lead over Trump in Florida and four point lead in Ohio. In the end, Trump won both – by three and eight points, respectively.
The Trafalgar Group, one of the only nonpartisan outlets to predict Trump’s win in 2016 released a poll on Sunday which showed Trump with 46.5 percent of the vote compared to Biden’s 44.1 percent. A far closer race than the 10-point lead other polls were predicting
As happened in 2016, Donald Trump appears to have been helped by ‘shy’ voters who turned out on election day but were not willing to admit who they were voting for ahead of time.
Many experts and Trump supporters blamed the polling error on an increasing unwillingness of the public to declare their support for conservative candidates.
The same has been true in other countries in recent years, where polls have under-estimated right-wing support.
The Trafalgar Group is one of the only nonpartisan outlets that correctly predicted a Republican victory in 2016 after finding that Trump was leading in the key battleground states of Michigan and Pennsylvania.
In this year’s election, the Trafalgar group claimed that Trump would return for a second term and had predicted 275 for Trump with 216 for Biden with 47 electoral college vote toss-ups.