Analyst Explains Why Polls May 'Underestimate' Kamala Harris' Chances
Political analyst Nate Cohn explained why polls may "underestimate" Vice President Kamala Harris ' chances in Tuesday's presidential election.
With only three days until Election Day, the race remains close between Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, and former President Donald Trump , the Republican presidential nominee.
In an titled, "So, Can We Trust the Polls?" published on Friday, Cohn, the chief political analyst for The New York Times with a focus on elections and polling, wrote how the polls underestimated Trump in 2016 when he first ran for president and again in 2020 during his reelection campaign.
He wrote that the polls may be more accurate this time around because the COVID-19 pandemic—which evidence suggests skewed polling results—is over and pollsters have made major methodological changes.
However, he added that many pollsters changed how they conduct their polls in hopes of better representing Trump's supporters—a group believed to be unreachable with traditional polling. Cohn called this assumption about the difficulty of reaching Trump's base "quite possibly correct."
"But if that assumption turns out to be wrong, it's possible that pollsters could overcompensate," he wrote.
Cohn then posed the possibility of Harris being underestimated in the polls because of pollsters' concerns of underestimating Trump for a third time.
"Perhaps the very best reason to think the polls might underestimate Kamala Harris this cycle is simply that many pollsters are so concerned—understandably—about underestimating Mr. Trump," he wrote.
