"The US polling industry is at a crossroads" as the presidential election results are unveiling a closer race between the two candidates than most polls predicted, according to a prominent pollster. "I think, clearly the polling industry is at a crossroads right now, and these are methodological problems, not ideological problems," said John Zogby, a renowned public opinion pollster, author, and founder of Zogby Strategies in the US. He said he defended the polls in 2016 presidential elections that had predicted a win for Democratic Party candidate Hillary Clinton because they had captured the trend. Clinton won the national popular vote by 2.5 percent points but Republican candidate Donald Trump became the president after winning the Electoral College votes. Oversampling of Democrats "Some polls did the same this time (regarding trend). But some of the major pollsters really got it wrong. I don't cast aspersions on them but I do think oversampling of Democrats was indeed a problem," Zogby told a select group of journalists at a virtual media briefing on Wednesday evening, organized by Washington Foreign Press Center, as part of a virtual reporting tour of the election process. The US Department of State has selected more than 200 journalists from media outlets across the globe, including Emirates News Agency (WAM) for the eight-week long virtual tour. Most of the polls had predicted more popular votes for Biden by up to two-digit percent over incumbent President Donald Trump, which would have translated to the corresponding majority for the former Vice President in Electoral College. Closer race However, even after the majority of the popular votes were counted by Thursday evening, Biden has only around 2.5 percent point lead in popular votes. He is still locked in a close race to win the triumph number of 270 votes in Electoral College as a razor-thin margin still separates him from Trump in a few decisive swing states. "Let's take a look overall," Zogby pointed out, "because this race is so close no matter who wins, we can draw the conclusion that Donald Trump was not repudiated by the public. We can also draw the conclusion that Joe Biden, if he wins, did not get a strong ringing endorsement." "Actually this was not a surprise," Zogby said. "Many of us were expecting to not know the winner for at least a few days. The best guess was by the end of the week. It is shocking that after all these people, perhaps a total of 150 million people who have voted, that we don't have a clear answer just yet," he said. Methodological problems of polls "We should also note that among the things that we expected was a very large turnout, although no one actually predicted that there would have been over 100 million votes cast prior to Election Day," the pollster said. Talking about the methodological problems of polls, Zogby said some of the University polls oversampled Democrats by 9 to 11 percentage points. He said: "Perhaps we're seeing the end of telephone polling" because very few Americans are using landlines and response rates on cell phones are dismal as younger people will not answer calls. Exit poll findings Revealing the findings of the exit poll he conducted, Zogby said that Donald Trump performed better than expected because, among the voters that considered economy as the No. 1 issue, 80 percent of them favored him. They felt that "we should focus more on rebuilding the economy than handling and treating the coronavirus." Trump also won among those who said that America needed a president who was a strong leader. As for those who identified that racial inequality was the top issue, Joe Biden won the support of that group, Zogby revealed. Those who said that the next president must deal with the coronavirus before rebuilding the economy also favored Biden. Strong and caring leaders Among the voters who said that they wanted a president who shows good judgment and a president who will produce national unity, Biden had an edge. The exit poll also asked the question, "Which candidate cares more about people like you and me?" Zogby revealed. The favorable answers were equally divided between Trump and Biden, contrary to the expectations that most would choose Biden on this, he said. Five percent of the voters said that they made up their minds in the last few days of the campaign. Among them, 51 percent said they voted for Trump, Zogby revealed. — WAM
