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Polls Found Strength for Democrats, but Still Missed Badly

Democratic gains were expected, but surveys almost uniformly underestimated how well the left would do. Many pollsters seem to have made similar mistakes.

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· 7:51 min

James Talarico, in a dark suit, holds his hand near his chest while walking through a crowd of supporters.
Polls of the Texas Senate race underestimated the strength of James Talarico, the Democratic nominee, by around nine percentage points.Credit...Haiyun Jiang/The New York Times

Nov. 12, 2026Updated 3:29 p.m. ET

In one important sense, polls got the story of this year’s election right: They showed Democrats winning the House and leading in the race for control of the Senate.

By another measure, this year’s polls were among the worst in recent memory. When looking across all pollsters, surveys systematically underestimated the support of Democratic candidates, and they did so on a scale that rivaled or even exceeded the heavily criticized misses of 2016 and 2020, when polls underestimated Republicans.

Overall, national polls this year underestimated the strength of Democrats by around four percentage points. Across the key Senate races, the polls underestimated Democrats by an even larger five-point miss, compared with an average of about 3.5 points across all Senate races.

This error is similar in size to the recent Trump-era presidential polling misfires. In 2020, national polls underestimated Republicans by about four percentage points; in 2016, Republicans were underestimated by three points.

Not every pollster this year erred by so much. The New York Times/Siena Poll, for instance, did not systematically underestimate the Democrats. Neither did a handful of other pollsters, including AtlasIntel and Survey 160.

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Source: The New York Times · Caroline Soler, Ruth Igielnik, Jillian Vordick

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Topic
Politics
Country
🇺🇸 US
Publisher language
EN
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