In every election cycle, there's a barrage of polls attempting to gauge the political landscape, often overwhelming in number and dubious in accuracy. Pollsters churn out numbers, but do they actually matter? This week's Marist Poll is a perfect example of how some polls can miss the mark entirely, standing out for their sheer absurdity.
Like many university-sponsored polls, the Marist Poll seems more concerned with grabbing attention than providing insight. They often miss one crucial fact: we don’t elect a president through a national popular vote. Yet, these polls keep surfacing, designed to drive news cycles and promote their brand rather than offer any real strategic value to campaigns.
What makes this poll especially baffling is its glaring disconnect from recent electoral trends. Several reports this week, including todays Gallup announcement, noted that, for the first time in decades, registered Republican voters now outnumber Democrats nationally. That’s a significant, historic shift—one that hasn’t made its way to Marist yet. The Marist poll claims the electorate on Election Day will consist of 40% Democrats, 33% Republicans, and 26% Independents. This projection not only defies logic but inflates Democratic numbers to a level that exceeds their performance in 2016 and 2020, when the gap between the two parties was narrower.
Pollsters have faced a growing problem since 2016: Trump supporters are notoriously hesitant to engage with them. Marist’s own data acknowledges that only 6% of Republicans don’t back Trump. Yet Trump has consistently outperformed polls, largely due to the so-called "shy" voters who simply refuse to participate in surveys but turn up to vote. This reluctance skews polling data and worsens when the few responses are overly weighted, creating significant inaccuracies.
Despite these known challenges, Marist has opted to double down on an electoral model that overestimates Democratic turnout while ignoring shifts among Republicans. It’s a move that any seasoned political consultant would quickly dismiss. After all, if Democrats outnumber Republicans by such a wide margin on Election Day, the race wouldn’t even be close. But as reality would have it, Marist’s predictions are far from reality.
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