Brett Loyd, the Republican National Committee’s polling director from 2008 to 2014 and a pollster for Trump’s 2016 and 2020 campaigns, is president and CEO of the nonpartisan Bullfinch Group and a contributor for the Independent Center.
Why did pollsters like me blow the election? We failed to account for independents
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White, suburban, college-educated mothers. Second-generation Hispanic males in the Rust Belt. There are many demographics that Donald Trump overperformed this election on his way to victory. The polls, by and large, did a good job of picking up this sentiment.
But pollsters — myself included — modeled likely voter turnout wrong.
We did not model an electorate with both major parties in decline and independents surging to overtake the Democrats. The result was that Trump won decisively while most polls suggested a dead heat.
Don’t be fooled by pollsters who flipped a coin and guessed Trump — they were wrong, too.
I have yet to find a pollster with an Election Day model that showed these improbable movements: Democrats turning out 6 points less than in 2020, independents turning out more than Democrats (up 8 points from 2020), and Republicans making up a smaller percentage of the electorate than in 2020.
Consider Pennsylvania. From 2016 to 2020, the percentages of independents and Democrats decreased by one and two points, respectively, while Republicans increased by two points.
Then, the political winds shifted wildly. From 2020 to 2024, Democrats decreased by four points and Republicans by one point, while independents increased by about the difference, 4 points.
The Republican decline there was similar to that in other swing states and nationwide.
The notion that Trump won because Republicans turned out en masse for him is incorrect. Additionally, Republicans didn’t vote for Trump with nearly the same intensity as Democrats voted for Kamala Harris.
Here again, Pennsylvania is indicative of the toss-up states and the nation: 91% of Republicans voted for Trump, while 95% of Democrats voted for Harris. In other words, Republicans saw less turnout and less support for Trump among those who voted.
What put him over the top? Independents.
Arizona illustrates this well: From 2020 to 2024, Republicans decreased as a percentage of the state’s electorate, and Trump only received 93% of the Republican vote.
In comparison, Harris won 99% percent of the Democratic vote. Once again, Republican turnout and support for Trump were slipping.
Yet Trump won the support of Arizona’s largest political group, independents, by 9 points, and beat Harris 52%-47%.
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