Biased polling has a serious effect on elections

 by Allan J. Feifer

America has evolved (devolved?) not to a democracy or constitutional republic, but rather into an entire nation run on polling. How else to explain some of the following contradictions:

• Biden's second term will go down in history as equal to or worse than Jimmy Carter's on an endless variety of topics. From a national security perspective, Biden very nearly cost us our country. Average polling for Biden's second term was 39-41%. This comes from large aggregated polling averages, such as The Hill/DDHQ and Ballotpedia's week-over-week index.


• Trump's second term is less than 15 months old and is likely to be considered one of the most consequential presidencies in the last hundred years. Average polling numbers for Trump's second term have been 39% (currently 40.9%). This figure comes from the multi-poll aggregate published on April 3, 2026, which averages all major national pollsters.


• For grins and giggles—Kamala Harris' numbers: At the time she entered the 2024 race (July 21, 2024), Harris immediately polled at ~48% nationally in head-to-head matchups with Trump. At the end of the 2024 race (Election Day, November 5, 2024): Aggregated polling showed Harris ~48.5% vs. Trump ~47.7%, a Harris +0.8% national polling lead. Actual result: Trump won the popular vote 49.8% to 48.3% (Trump +1.5%).

The obvious conclusion is that polling (at least in national elections) is untethered to election outcomes or facts on the ground. 2024 was not a one-off either. It also happened in 2016. No other election in the last 12 years was polling so inaccurately that it led to the other guy winning. 

What's the reason?

Polling has built-in bias. 

Acta Politica finds:

• “Democratic bias in polls reached record highs in recent elections.”
• The study explores “shy” or socially pressured respondents and concludes that cross-pressured voters exist on both sides. Still, the net effect in recent U.S. cycles has leaned toward overstating Democratic support.

AAPOR’s audits of 2016 and 2020 found:

• 2016: National polls were close, but state polls systematically understated Trump.
• 2020: Polling errors were of “unusual magnitude”, the worst in 40 years, and again overstated Democratic support.

That leaves us with an open, but reasonable, question—why isn’t the predictable and consistent misstatement in polls adjusted statistically beforehand to ensure accuracy? Would you be surprised that polls are already tuned (biased)? Pollsters adjust for nonresponse, education, turnout, and social desirability.

Even given pollster “adjustments,” polling still consistently undercounts Republicans…full stop. Given that most pollsters are either unashamedly in the tank for Democrats or are mainstream media types with a dubious history of fairness and love for anyone on the right, I’m a heck of a lot more than circumspect as to the veracity of the vast majority of polls.

Or, as this British comedy show explained:

Despite their manifest ideological failings, polls have the power to change election outcomes that is not appreciated. Polling affects:

• Voters
• Donors
• Media
• Campaign strategy
• Party elites
• Narratives about momentum, viability, and inevitability

This is why polling is not a passive reflection of public opinion. It is an active force in the political ecosystem. Polling shapes perception, and perception shapes reality.

Polling is not passive; it is an active tactic the left has used to influence voters in myriad ways. Low polling numbers take away a certain percentage of voters regardless of the issues.

Polling is not a passive snapshot of public sentiment; it has become an active political instrument that the left has learned to wield with strategic precision. By saturating the media environment with surveys showing Republicans trailing, polling shapes voter psychology long before ballots are cast. Low polling numbers reliably peel away a measurable share of soft or low-information voters who interpret those numbers as a signal of inevitability or futility. 

This dynamic disproportionately harms Republicans, whose coalition includes more turnout-sensitive, institution-skeptical voters who are likelier to disengage when they believe their candidate is losing. In this way, polling doesn’t merely report the political landscape — it helps construct it, reinforcing narratives that advantage Democrats while depressing Republican enthusiasm at critical moments. In the majority of cases, polling affects Republicans considerably more than Democrats, and it likely has skewed races in Democrats’ favor more often than we know.

Let’s circle back to some of those earlier polling numbers we threw out:

Biden’s second-term numbers are very close to Trump’s. Think about that for a moment and imagine a pollster asking the key question: 

“Do you approve or disapprove of the way [PRESIDENT’S NAME] is handling his job as president?”

Frankly, it’s a meaningless question because the answer most people are giving is not a clean, rational evaluation of performance. They’re giving a fast, emotionally filtered, identity-driven response, shaped by how the brain processes politics, inadvertently or on purpose, leading people away from reason and serious analysis. 

Their brain reacts with:

• tribal identity (“my side vs. their side”)
• emotional memory (anger, pride, fear, frustration)
• social cues (what people around me think)
• media narratives they’ve absorbed

Only after that does the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex — the reasoning center — try to justify the emotional reaction.

In other words:

People feel their answer, then explain it.

This is also intended and has led to our elections becoming popularity contests. As a society, we’ve crossed the Rubicon, where sound bites trump rational arguments and truth is never couched in black-and-white terms… always subtle but consequential nuance, seldom in our favor.

Biden vs. Trump should be a 90-10 issue, but the fact that it’s not is all you need to know to understand how difficult our task is. Polling is an unfortunate reality we will continue to battle and are disadvantaged by. Understanding that polling is just another frontier we must overcome is today’s takeaway. 

Are we up to the challenge? We’d better be!

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2026/04/biased_polling_has_a_serious_effect_on_elections.html