OPINION:
It has become the biennial parlor game of American politics: Pollsters release a wave of data showing Democrats cruising to victory, pundits start measuring the drapes, and then Election Day arrives and half the country wonders if it was living in an alternate universe.
We saw this movie in 2016. We saw it in 2020. We watched the sequel in 2024. And yet, here we are in 2026, with Democrats once again being told to pop the Champagne early.
Here is a fun fact on which nobody in the political press wants to dwell: In the final stretch of 2024, Republicans beat their September polling numbers by 9 points in Iowa, 6 in Ohio and 5 in Michigan.
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Rewind to 2018 — President Trump’s first midterm — and the GOP still outperformed its polling by 6 points in Iowa, 6 in Ohio and 8 in Michigan.
That is not a fluke. It is a pattern so consistent that you could set your watch by it. As CNN’s own Harry Enten put it, “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me four times, I just have to ask the question: Could it happen again?”
Yes, that is CNN saying that maybe the polls are wrong. Again. Not some basement blogger with a Trump flag, but CNN’s chief data analyst, on air, openly wondering whether the pollsters have once again failed to find the people who actually show up to vote.
Why does this keep happening? Simple: MAGA does not answer the phone for pollsters, and frankly, MAGA does not much like pollsters to begin with.
Response rates on surveys have cratered into the low single digits, and the people who do pick up the phone tend to be the hyper-engaged, terminally online political junkies — not the guy who votes once every four years because Mr. Trump’s name is on the ballot and nobody else seems worth the gas money.
Call it nonresponse bias, call it reluctant responders, call it whatever fancy term the political science journals prefer. The bottom line is that pollsters are trying to survey an electorate that has learned to screen unknown numbers, ignore texts and generally treat “Hi, I’m calling from a national research firm” like a scam call. Because, increasingly, it might as well be.
None of this is to say that Mr. Trump is sitting pretty. He is not. His approval rating has slid to roughly 30% in his worst polls. Nearly 7 in 10 Americans do not trust him to keep his business interests separate from his presidential decisions.
Say what you want about the polling misses, but the trendline on Mr. Trump’s popularity is not exactly subtle.
Even two-thirds of Republicans are losing confidence in his economic stewardship. Earlier this month, Pew Research Center reported a 67% rate of approval for the president among his 2024 voters, a 28-percentage-point drop from the voters’ 95% approval rate at the beginning of his second term.
And notice where he is spending his time. Mr. Trump is not barnstorming Pennsylvania or Wisconsin, trying to flip blue territory; he is in Kalispell, Montana, campaigning for a congressional candidate in a state he already won by 20 points. That is not the move of a president confident of winning new converts. It is a president trying to make sure that his own base does not stay home.
Here is the uncomfortable truth for Republicans: The 2026 midterms are shaping up to be exactly what midterms always are for the party in power. That is a referendum on the guy in the Oval Office. And unlike 2016 or 2024, as much as he wishes it were so, Mr. Trump’s name is not on the ballot this time to drag his voters to the polls.
The turnout gap is the whole ballgame, and right now, it is breaking hard for Democrats. CBS News found that 87% of Democrats say they will “definitely” vote, compared with just 76% of Republicans. NBC News has Democrats up 12 points among “definite” voters. ABC found the same: 72% to 65%.
This is not just poll-speak. Democrats actually outvoted Republicans in this year’s primaries in Texas, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina and Minnesota.
So sure, maybe the pollsters are once again failing to find the silent, surly, unlisted-number MAGA voter lurking in the diner booths of rural Ohio. History says to bet on it. But even if that historical polling error materializes exactly as it has every cycle since 2016, Republicans are trying to overcome it without Mr. Trump on the ballot — and while sitting on an enthusiasm deficit that would make any incumbent party nervous.
The pollsters have been wrong before. The question this November is whether being wrong again is actually enough.
• Joseph Curl covered the White House and politics for a decade for The Washington Times. He can be reached at josephcurl@gmail.com.
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