What we can trust 2020 election polls to tell us

As Election Day draws closer, Americans are being inundated with polls about the state of the presidential race. And understandably, many are wondering whether polls can be trusted after Donald Trump’s surprise victory in 2016.

A better question to ask may be what, exactly, are we trusting polls to do? If the answer is to predict the future, then trust in polls is misplaced. But if the answer is to reveal the public’s priorities and values – and why people vote the way they do – then polls are the best tool.

Good preelection polls try to get inside people’s heads. They attempt to understand the reasoning behind Americans’ values, beliefs and concerns. They explore how voters are reacting to major events such as the pandemic and economic downturn; how they feel about the candidates and policies; and which factors are motivating them to vote for a particular candidate, or whether to vote at all.

Perhaps the greatest value of surveys emerges after the election. It’s typical for winning candidates to point to the results and claim a mandate based on their interpretation of public will. But while elections are rightly the foundation of our democracy, they are imperfect measures of public sentiment. Not all Americans participate in elections: In 2016, only around 61% of voting-age citizens cast a ballot. And those who do vote may not like the (often-binary) choices on their ballot – or agree with their candidate on all the issues. Good public opinion polls are a necessary complement to elections to get a representative cross-section of what the entire public thinks, and to be sure the public’s real priorities are registered.

A record share of voters said in a summer survey that it really matters who wins the 2020 election, and with that high level of engagement comes an understandable desire for certainty. But on the night of Nov. 3, Americans will be searching for hard data that may not exist. Millions of mail-in votes will need to be counted, even as exit polls – which traditionally provide important insights about where an election may be headed – will face unprecedented challenges. As Americans, we need to summon patience, accept the uncertainty of the moment and wait for election results and rigorous polling data to tell us what the voters decided and why.

This is an abbreviated version of a post published here.

Michael Dimock

President, Pew Research Center