Ezra Klein asked how resilient Democratic midterm hopes are to polling error. Silver noted that many Democratic leads are around three points, so a modest error in the same direction everywhere would make for a very long election night.
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…the model and thinking about like what you're trying to correct for, you know, you've seen Trump underestimated many a time, seen Susan Collins underestimated many a time. On the other hand, the pollsters know that has happened, right? How do you think about the polling error dimension of this?
Look, the first thing I always tell people is that whenever you're looking at a series of polls and a Senate race or Senate races, plural, always ask yourself, what if they're off by three or four points in the same direction in every race? You know, Democrats have a lot of three-point leads in races like Ohio and Texas, more or less. If you had a three-point polling error, you would have a very long night where we might be waiting for ranked choice voting in. Alaska, but it's, you know, the House is different. If Democrats were not to win the House, then there would be profound questions about what's going on with the polling and in some ways what's going on with the country, too.
I think Democrats have the emotional feeling that when there's a polling error, it is against them because it, you know, Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden and just in general, polls actually have repeatedly underestimated Donald Trump. But is that true? And is it particularly true in midterms? Have…
It has not been true in the two midterms under in the Trump era. I guess 2018 was under Trump and their polls were one of the most accurate years for polling ever. 2022, similar. In fact, there were a couple of races that were high profile, like the Federman race in Pennsylvania, where polls showed…
now we stand alone.