Questions rise over primary polls following Michigan, Wisconsin upsets

▪ The problem with primary polls 

▪ Leavitt to depart as press secretary 

▪ The U.K.’s unusual election 

Thank you for signing up!

Subscribe to more newsletters here

The limits of primary polling are under a hot spotlight after two consecutive surprise results in closely contested Democratic primaries. 

On Tuesday in Wisconsin, Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley narrowly defeated state Rep. Francesca Hong, a democratic socialist who had led Crowley by more than 20 points in the final update to the Decision Desk HQ (DDHQ) polling average. 

It was a huge upset that left poll watchers doing a double take.  

A week earlier in Michigan, a left-wing candidate, Abdul El-Sayed, held on to defeat his more moderate rival, Rep. Haley Stevens (D-Mich.), by less than a percentage point in a primary to be the Democratic nominee for a critical Senate seat.  

This was also a surprise, in that many had expected El-Sayed to cruise to an easy victory given his advantage in the polls. On average, polls had shown El-Sayed ahead by 13 points before election day. 

Polling experts emphasized that polling in primaries is a difficult game. You’re trying to project who is going to show up, and that’s a much tougher task in a primary than it is in a general election.  

In both Michigan and Wisconsin, pollsters also had the added challenge of dealing with candidates jumping in and out of the race, and in some cases remaining on the ballot.  

State Sen. Mallory McMorrow (Mich.) dropped out of the primary in Michigan but remained on the ballot and won 4 percent of the vote. In Wisconsin, Crowley, for his part, was in the race, then out of the race, and then back in. 

“Just the fact that you had candidates getting in and out of the race — or really out of the race, and then also David Crowley getting back into the race — there was just a lot happening and a pretty short amount of time in this race,” said Geoffrey Skelley, the chief elections analyst for DDHQ. 

The big shift in Wisconsin also had to do with Crowley, whose support jumped up on election day from where it had been in the polls.   

Skelley noted that the final polls were roughly correct about Hong’s level of support, in the mid to upper 30s, but greatly underestimated support for Crowley.  

Those polls showed a large number of undecided voters. It appears many of those voters ended up deciding on Crowley in the race’s closing days.  

Perhaps that can partly be attributed to Hong’s stumbles on the campaign trail. She spent some time over the last week of the contest explaining past social media remarks she had made, including a post about canceling Thanksgiving.  

Crowley also likely benefitted from the full-throated support of Wisconsin’s outgoing Gov. Tony Evers (D), who worked hard to get Crowly across the finish line.  

Skelley said he believes there was a significant coalescing of the rest of the electorate behind Crowley in the final days of the race. 

The last independent public poll of the race was released five days before primary day, but that was the only such poll in the past two weeks. 

That final poll, released by State Navigate, showed Hong ahead with 42 percent support, statistically in range of her final result, followed by Crowley’s 21 percent. 

Chaz Nuttycombe, the executive director of State Navigate, told Morning Report that a few factors played in to underestimating Crowley. 

Wisconsin is an open primary state, allowing any registered voter to participate in any primary they choose, and does not register voters with a specific party. 

Nuttycombe said as many as one in 10 voters who chose to participate in the Democratic primary were Republicans who were “definitely not” voting for Hong. He noted that with Rep. Tom Tiffany (R-Wis.) all but assured to win the GOP nomination for governor, Republicans didn’t have a competitive primary to vote in. 

“I think with all the right-wing targeting of Hong in the final stretch, there were Republicans who wanted to go and vote against her right away,” Nuttycombe said. 

He said the “late deciders” in the primary who remained unsure of who to support overwhelmingly got behind Crowley, especially as Hong was hit hard on electability concerns. 

In Michigan, Nuttycombe said, a key issue was nonresponse bias, leading to an incomplete picture of who would turn out at........

© The Hill