Minnesota analysts weigh in on accuracy of polls with nearly a week left until Election Day
MINNEAPOLIS — With just over a week to go until the presidential election, most polls say the race is a tie. But how accurate are the polls?
The polls have missed badly before — most infamously in 2016 when almost every poll had Hillary Clinton beating former President Donald Trump. Pollsters dramatically failed to accurately capture Trump's support and he won that election.
In 2020, they got the winner right — but if you look carefully, they still underestimated the eventual Trump vote.
The week before the election in 2020, the average of polls was Biden at 51.2% and Trump at 44%.
The actual 2020 results were close to the polls with Biden, who won, but Trump ended up at 46.8% — four points more than the polls showed he would get.
This year, the average of the major polls has this race tied with both Harris and Trump at 48.5%.
Trump has been gaining ground on Vice President Kamala Harris the past few weeks, but could the polls still be underestimating his support?
"I think there is a segment of the population that doesn't want to say out loud they are supporting President Trump," Republican analyst Amy Koch said. "I think there is a large segment of the population, that is what those numbers reflect."
Democratic analyst Abou Amara agrees to an extent.
"I think it's going to happen. I don't think it's going to be as big as it was in 2020," Amara said. "Democrats have the most robust polling operation in history and that is how you combat some of the polling because I do think there is a support for Trump that is not reflected in the polls."
Pollsters believe this time they are accurately getting to the Trump voters.
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Editor's note: An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that Trump got 48.5% of the national vote in 2020. It has since been updated to reflect that he received 46.8%.