2024 Polling Closer than You Might Think

2020 Swing State polls' comparison vs. actual results portends 2024 and reveals that this election if one candidate polls far better than the other 2024 polls will be more accurate.

Photo by Matthew Bamberg and Wikipedia public domain 

Polling accuracy might be better in this election than in the last. An analysis of the 2020 results reveals that if the margin between the two candidates is higher than the margin of error, the candidate predicted to win will.

For the most part, presidential election polling is better than one might think.

The views about polling run the gamut from good to bad. One thing is sure: Many voters pay attention to the dozens out there.

In 2020, the primary weakness of the polls was that they slightly missed the mark in most “swing states,” revealing a tendency of voters to lean more toward Trump than Biden, even though Trump didn’t win.

Out of sixteen apparently “swing” states, according to fivethiryeight.com (Texas and Florida were included as part of the group), the differences in predicting what would happen and what happened were not all that much.

While some polls can be unreliable, as in past elections, most voters pay attention to the …