No misfire that year was more striking than CNN’s. Its final poll before the election estimated that Joe Biden held a landslide-size lead of 12 percentage points over then-President Donald Trump.
As I wrote in “Lost in a Gallup,” my book about polling failure in U.S. presidential elections, surveys conducted for CNN and other major corporate media outlets “possess unmatched if obvious narrative-shaping effects.” Results of their surveys are prominently shared with large audiences, thus helping media-sponsored polls to set the storyline for the election campaign.
“When these pollsters speak, the public listens,” veteran polling analyst David Moore has said. The robust lead CNN reported for Biden in 2020 “clearly was part of the ongoing narrative,” Moore added.
As pollster Mark Penn pointed out after the election, polls showing margins of 10 to 12 points in Biden’s favor would have corresponded to “about a 40-state landslide – a result that on its face should have been dismissed as impossible.”
The 2020 presidential race was the third in succession in which CNN was off target in its final poll before Election Day.
In 2016, CNN estimated Hillary Clinton’s late-campaign lead among likely voters was 6 percentage points; she won the popular vote by 2.1 points but lost the Electoral College to Trump. In 2012, CNN’s final preelection poll reported that the race was deadlocked between President Barack Obama and Republican Mitt Romney; Obama won by nearly 4 points.
No misfire that year was more striking than CNN’s. Its final poll before the election estimated that Joe Biden held a landslide-size lead of 12 percentage points over then-President Donald Trump.
Electoral authorities in Colombia have ruled in favor of investigating financial misconduct allegations against the 2022 campaign that got President Gustavo Petro elected