Note: This analysis first appeared in The Hill on Oct. 14, 2026.
Polls are again under scrutiny, with some rushing in to proclaim their demise. But it isn’t that polls have gotten worse. Rather, a mix of factors is creating unprecedented challenges for polling and for the public trying to understand it.
Why? First, there are the perennial challenges that are consistently misunderstood. Surveys are well suited to measure beliefs and attitudes about issues, and they can capture respondents’ candidate preferences pretty accurately. But predicting who will actually turn out to vote will always be an imperfect effort, largely because people are bad at predicting their own behavior and tend to report aspirations rather than realities.
This challenge is magnified in midterms and primaries, contests that often have lower turnout, localized dynamics and low information. And yet, many consumers expect a level of precision that polls can’t deliver. And the cycle of disappointment repeats.
Second, there are slow-growing issues that have compounded the problem over the past decade. The polling field has exploded with new entrants as low-cost opt-in polling has developed. At the same time, the rapid increase in the cost of high-quality polling has led to fewer of these polls, relative to cheaper opt-in polls. It’s harder to know which pollsters to trust, and some states and localities are left without reliable data for consumers.
Some opt-in pollsters have decent track records – their modeling techniques may have improved, or they make educated guesses. We don’t know because their methodology is often opaque.
But trust in opt-in polling is increasingly in question. Numerous recent studies have documented “bogus respondents” slipping into these surveys. Fake respondents – whether artificial intelligence-enabled bot farms or people trying to make money – are more sophisticated and harder to eliminate. It particularly affects estimates of Hispanic adults and young people, whose preferences and turnout may be decisive in November.
Meanwhile, predicting who will show up to vote keeps getting harder as voting rules (when, where and how to vote) change over time and across jurisdictions, and as microtargeting by campaigns can move segments of the electorate in ways broad polls often can’t register.
If any of this gives you pause, we still haven’t touched on three new wild cards this year.
First, we’re seeing more completely “synthetic surveys” – polls that purport to measure public opinion but don’t actually survey humans. Instead, they use AI to model what people would say. Our research on synthetic surveys finds they are not reliable substitutes for public opinion. Separately, we have also seen polls being shared that are entirely fabricated without disclosure.
Related: Can AI Stand In for Human Survey-Takers? Not Really
Second, uncertainty about voting mechanics, such as mail-in ballots, changing election laws in some states and even concerns about voter intimidation could influence turnout in hard-to-model ways. Widespread midcycle redistricting has scrambled voters’ awareness of who’s on their ballots. And the 2026 race has fewer incumbents on the ballot than any general election since 1992.
Third, the issues of AI and data centers have swelled into the public dialogue but haven’t yet become completely polarized by party. This makes the impact of AI on elections more dependent on local conditions, such as planned or existing data centers nearby, and what candidates are saying about the issue.
In short, predicting who will vote has always been hard in lower-turnout elections. It’s become more challenging over time, and 2026 has a swirl of unknowns compounding the challenge – a perfect storm ripe for confusion. Any one of these factors could yield surprises that are impossible to predict, even for the highest quality polls.
So, what can you do to make sense of the deluge of polls in this cycle? To start, don’t put too much stock in a single poll when thinking about election outcomes, and be wary of outliers.
Ask smart questions of the polls you do consider: Who conducted the poll? Does the organization have a good track record and reputation? Do they have a dog in the fight? Can you be sure the poll is surveying real humans? If so, which ones? Does the organization readily share information about its questions and methodology? Transparency is not the same as quality, but a lack of transparency is certainly a red flag.
Use polls for what they are best at: helping us understand the mood of the country, the issues on the public’s mind and what’s dividing and uniting people – in short, what the election is likely going to mean. Don’t expect polls to do what they cannot, especially this year.
Lastly, don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater: Don’t let a bad poll destroy your trust in polling altogether. Rigorous polls are still the best way to understand what the public thinks and believes even if they don’t always accurately predict primaries and midterms.
Without the public voice in polls, we’re left only with politicians claiming to speak for us.
