President Trump has stepped up his attacks on pollsters since his victory in November, raising concerns for an industry that was already facing challenges to its credibility.

Trump’s latest attacks came this week when he called for pollsters to be investigated as many surveys show him with historically low approval ratings for a president 100 days into a White House term. He is already suing longtime pollster Ann Selzer over a poll released before Election Day that showed him trailing in Iowa.

Experts said that while pollsters aren’t likely to back down from doing their jobs due to Trump's threats, the attacks fuel concerns over free speech and add yet another challenge for an industry already struggling to restore the public’s trust in its work.

“A big role of polling is to give a voice to regular people, and if regular people stop trusting that, then that's just one other facet of American political life where people are losing faith in core institutions, and I think that's something we all have to be concerned about,” said Michael Hanmer, the director of the Center for Democracy and Civic Engagement at the University of Maryland.

The past decade has arguably been a rough time for the polling industry.

Trump pulled off an upset victory in 2016 after Hillary Clinton had widely been considered the favorite. While national polling averages correctly predicted Clinton’s slight popular vote win, Trump was underestimated in the key states that put him over the top.

Pollsters adjusted their methodologies, but many were even further off in 2020, correctly predicting President Biden’s win but by a much smaller margin than expected.

Much attention was on the polls ahead of last November to see whether 2024 would illustrate some of the same issues, and while polling accurately predicted the........

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