- Question
Can you trust US polls?
US election polling has been brought into question after failures to predict and understand the US presidential outcome in 2016, and 2020. Can we trust US polling? Or are there fundamental issues with the polling approach?
Position 1 of 2
Read this position →Yes, you can trust US polls
The case for trusting US polls: that they publish estimates with stated uncertainty rather than predictions, and that their errors are decomposed, published and corrected in a way no rival source of belief about public opinion can match.
Position 2 of 2
Read this position →No, you cannot trust US polls
The case against trusting US polls: that collapsing response rates have left samples self-selected on the very traits being measured, and that weighting and turnout models decide the result while the published error covers neither.