Understanding how 2020 election polls performed and what it might mean for other kinds of survey work

The 2020 presidential election was much closer than polls suggested in several battleground states, and more decisive for President Donald Trump in others. Many are understandably asking how these outcomes could happen, especially after the fairly aggressive steps the polling community took to understand and address problems that surfaced in 2016. We are asking ourselves the same thing. Here’s a preliminary shot at answering that question.

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America is exceptional in the nature of its political divide

The U.S. is hardly the only country wrestling with deepening political fissures. But America's relatively rigid two-party system stands apart from others around the world by collapsing a wide range of social and political debates into a singular battle line that may make our differences appear larger than they are.

• 2020 election reveals two broad voting coalitions fundamentally at odds

In 2018, government restrictions on religion reach highest level globally in more than a decade

The global median level of government restrictions on religion continued to climb in 2018, reaching an all-time high since the Center began tracking these trends in 2007. The total number of countries with “high” or “very high” levels of government restrictions has been mounting as well. As of 2018, most of the 56 countries with high or very high levels of government restrictions on religion were in the Asia-Pacific region or the Middle East-North Africa region.

• Key takeaways from the report
• Explore restrictions on religion in the 25 most populous countries, 2007-2018

Most mail and provisional ballots got counted in past U.S. elections – but many did not

Final, certified vote counts from the 2020 U.S. presidential election won’t be available for at least a few weeks. But we can get some sense of how many mail, provisional and military and overseas ballots will and won’t get counted – and why – by looking at the past two general elections. For example, in 2016, voters submitted nearly 33.5 million mail ballots, but more than 400,000 (1.2% of the total) weren’t counted.

How people around the world see the World Health Organization’s initial coronavirus response

In most of the 14 countries the Center surveyed this past summer, majorities approved of the World Health Organization’s handling of the pandemic. Japan and South Korea – two early hotspots for the virus – were notable outliers. At the same time, people in most countries were more likely to approve of their own nation’s handling of the pandemic than the WHO’s response.

• See all COVID-19 research

The pace of Boomer retirements has accelerated in the past year

Many publics around world doubt safety of genetically modified foods

From our research