A Bigger Polling Miss Than 2016
Plus: Voters back taxing the rich, the races still uncalled, and new reader questions
NOV 9 |
1. LEADING OFF
Six days after the 2026 midterms, the clearest lesson may be that the Democrats' chances of riding a wave were significantly underrated.
First, we'll start with he pollsters. The final averages from Nate Silver's Silver Bulletin and RealClearPolitics both had Democrats winning the national House vote by about nine points. In reality, they're on track to win it by roughly 13. By early counts, that's a bigger miss than in 2016 or 2024 — when, rather infamously, the polls underestimated Republican strength.
But it wasn't just the pollsters. Some of the people whose literal job it is to elect Democrats did as well. The biggest Democratic Senate super PAC, for example, spent nothing in Florida, where its party's nominee lost by a mere three points. It also sat out Louisiana, where Democrat Jamie Davis lost by less than two to Republican Julia Letlow. (You can read more about Florida, in particular, in our reader questions below.)
Hindsight is 20/20. But a miss on this scale raises a lot of questions. And one that will be on a lot of Democrats' minds this week and in the years to come will be: What else about the voters are we underestimating?
Below, you'll find Surina Venkat on the states that voted to make their wealthiest residents pay more, the deadlines that could push Democrats' Senate majority to 56, and your questions about the polls and Florida.
— Elias Isquith
2. WHERE VOTERS SAID YES TO TAXING THE RICH
Voters weren't only electing Democrats on Tuesday. As The Caucus's Surina Venkat reports, they also voted to keep or raise taxes on their wealthiest neighbors.
Washington refused to repeal its millionaire tax. Colorado looks set to swap its flat income tax for one that charges high earners more.
It wasn't a clean sweep: California's billionaire tax appears headed for defeat, and Iowa and North Carolina went the other way. But for the many Democrats still arguing over how hard to run against the rich, it's a series of results worth mulling.
To learn more about which states voted to tax the rich and which didn't, read Surina Venkat's full story at The Caucus.
3. THE WEEK AHEAD
Although the fundamental result of the midterm — a Democratic wave — is not in doubt, a number of races remain uncalled. They're all worth watching.
With Democrats at 254 House seats and 19 races still uncalled, their total could be anything between 254 to 273, with the final number having huge implications for the next two years, as well as for 2028.
Today: Alaska posts new results in its Senate race, where Democrat Mary Peltola leads Republican Senator Dan Sullivan by about 600 votes.
Tuesday: Alaska counts its last early votes and its questioned ballots. In Mississippi, it’s the deadline for mailed ballots to arrive and for voters who cast affidavit ballots (the state’s name for provisional ballots) without ID to show it at their circuit clerk’s office. Democrat Scott Colom leads Republican Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith by about 2,600 votes.
Thursday: Colorado’s deadline for voters to fix signature problems on their ballots and for military and overseas ballots to arrive. Democrat Eileen Laubacher holds a narrow lead over Republican Rep. Lauren Boebert (CO-04).
Friday: Mississippi’s 82 counties must certify their results, and Alaska’s deadline arrives for mailed ballots sent from inside the U.S.
4. READER QUESTIONS
Santiago from New York asks:
Is polling still broken? It doesn't seem like anyone saw this kind of wave coming. Or was it all undecided voters choosing at once?
Short answer: Yes, polls are still broken. But, interestingly, this time, they were “broken” for different reasons than in years when President Trump was on the ballot.
As a quick verdict: This year, the polls did see a wave coming. There were many of them showing Dems with huge leads on the generic ballot. At the same time, though, the field missed just how big a wave 2026 turned out to be.
Going into Election Day, Democrats led the generic ballot (the poll question asking which party you'd back for Congress) by 8.8 points in the RealClearPolitics average, their biggest midterm lead since 2006. But as of this writing, Democrats are on track to have won the national House vote by roughly 13 points. That's a significant gap!
It happened in the Senate, too, and across polling averages. Democratic Georgia Senator Jon Ossoff won by 18 after leading by 8.6 points in RealClearPolitics’ final average and by 10 in Decision Desk HQ’s. In Texas, meanwhile, Democrat James Talarico finished nearly 12 points ahead of Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton after leading by 2.6 and 3.5 points in those same averages.
As for undecided voters, the big voter surveys taken around Election Day don't show Trump's own voters changing their minds en masse. In CNN's Voter Poll, only about 7% of 2024 Trump voters who turned out backed a Democrat for Congress, though that share reached roughly one in ten in Texas, Ohio, Iowa, Kansas and South Carolina.
That doesn't count the pro-Trump voters who decided to stay home, but it suggests that the story is less that voters had a sudden change-of-heart and more that pollsters guessed wrong about who was going to vote. And because every poll starts with a guess about who will vote — and everything else follows downstream from that assumption — that guess matters more than it may seem.
As everyone knows, in 2016, 2020 and 2024, polls underestimated Trump. It turned out that was partly because Republicans had become less likely to answer surveys. So, to correct for that gap, pollsters began adjusting their samples to match how people voted in the last election. But this time, that too may have backfired.
In October, The Washington Post warned that if Trump supporters decided not to vote for Republican candidates, polls calibrated to the 2024 electorate could underestimate Democrats. It appears that is exactly what happened. And, according to early results, it looks like they missed this time by a wider margin than they did in 2016 or 2024. So the field is still guessing wrong about who is going to show up, but this time it was in the other direction.
Mary from Florida asks:
How much did the national Democrats not investing in Florida impact the races here? Florida can't be redder than South Carolina.
Thanks, Mary. As hard as it is to imagine the current iteration of Florida returning to its former status as a swing state, the state's two biggest races — one for Governor, the other to fill Secretary of State Marco Rubio's now-vacated Senate seat — were both close enough to make this a fair question.
Republican Florida Senator Ashley Moody beat Democratic Florida State Representative Angie Nixon by about three points. And in the Governor's race, Republican Rep. Byron Donalds (FL-19) beat Republican-turned-Democrat David Jolly by about one. Could more investment from national Democrats have swung at least one of those races?
In the governor's race, I think the answer is probably yes. Donalds' campaign raised nearly $174 million to Jolly's less than $28 million, and Jolly himself said in September that the only way he could lose was if national Democrats took a pass on his state.
Regarding Nixon's three-point loss, it's harder to say. While it's true that her deficit was more than two times as big as Jolly's, it's also undeniable that she was absurdly outspent. Republicans spent $28.7 million for TV ads in this race, whereas the Democrats devoted a mere $7.9 million — a difference of more than three and a half to one.
You're right about the map, too. Trump won Florida by 13 points in 2024 and South Carolina by nearly 18.
But South Carolina is also an example of why it isn't always just about the money. The Democrats' Senate Majority PAC spent only $750,000 there — and Democrat Annie Andrews still beat Republican South Carolina Senator Darline Graham, the sister of former Senator Lindsey Graham, an appointee to the office who ended up being, let's just say, something less than the greatest campaigner of her generation.
Even during a wave, in other words, candidate quality still matters.
5. IN THE NEWS
A missing memory card found in Seminole County put Republican Georgia State Representative Gerald Greene back ahead in the 154th District, which could shrink Democrats' first state House majority since 2005 to a single seat. (Atlanta Journal-Constitution)
Republican Florida Governor Ron DeSantis wants every federal judicial vacancy filled before Democrats take the Senate in January, and President Trump is set to keep naming judges as the lame-duck session opens this week. (The Hill)
Republican Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson, a longtime Trump ally, accused the Trump administration of corruption in a Saturday Fox News interview, citing claims by Calley Means, a former White House adviser who quit last month. (The Washington Post)
