A warning from Pew: The 2026 midterms will be uniquely difficult for polls

Polls are again under scrutiny, with some rushing in to proclaim their demise. But it isn’t that polls have gotten worse. Rather, a mix of factors is creating unprecedented challenges for polling and for the public trying to understand it.  

Why? First, there are the perennial challenges that are consistently misunderstood. Surveys are well suited to measure beliefs and attitudes about issues, and they can capture respondents’ candidate preferences pretty accurately. But predicting who will actually turn out to vote will always be an imperfect effort, largely because people are bad at predicting their own behavior and tend to report aspirations rather than realities. 

This challenge is magnified in midterms and primaries, contests that often have lower turnout, localized dynamics and low information. And yet, many consumers expect a level of precision that polls can’t deliver. And the cycle of disappointment repeats.  

Second, there are slow-growing issues that have compounded the problem over the past decade. The polling field has exploded with new entrants as low-cost opt-in polling has developed. At the same time, the rapid increase in the cost of high-quality polling has led to fewer of these polls, relative to cheaper opt-in polls. It’s harder to know which pollsters to trust, and some states and localities are left without reliable data for consumers.  

Some opt-in pollsters have decent track records — their modeling techniques may have improved, or they make educated guesses. We don’t know because their methodology is often opaque. 

But trust in opt-in polling is........

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