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Frank Luntz Warns Flawed Polling Could Mislead Democrats Ahead of U.S. Midterms
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Luntz warned flawed polling could mislead Democrats into overconfidence before midterms. Johnson said polls showing Democratic leads underestimate Republicans; polls may be even farther off.
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Polls, turnout, and bias
Veteran Republican pollster Frank Luntz warned that flawed polling practices could give Democrats a false sense of security heading into the upcoming midterm elections, arguing that conservative voters often avoid participating in surveys.
Luntz told CNN News Central, “I got 2016 wrong. I believed in the exit polls,” and he said, “Trump voters walked away, refused to participate because they thought it was against them.”
Luntz emphasized that turnout remains “the single most critical variable in predicting election outcomes,” and he argued that many standard surveys fail to gauge which respondents will actually vote.
Luntz said, “That’s why you have to do focus groups,” and he added that one-to-one interviews can reveal who will participate, even if those people are counted in polls but know they are not going to vote.
Luntz urged viewers to scrutinize how pollsters ask about turnout, saying, “It’s not whether you say you’re going to vote or not, because people lie.”
Johnson challenges the numbers
Speaker Mike Johnson told Fox News’s Laura Ingraham that he believes polls showing big leads for Democrats are underestimating Republicans, and he pointed to “more and more Republicans are unwilling to participate in these surveys.” Johnson said, “I think it’s [polls are] even further off this time because more and more Republicans are unwilling to participate in these surveys,” and he described the problem as “the partisan nonresponse bias.” The New York Times argued that midterm polling is less consistent state by state than presidential polling, and it said the direction of polling error “varies from state to state.”
In 2018, polls overestimated Democratic support in 18 states and Republican support in 12, while Michigan’s polls were “particularly accurate, missing the final margin by less than one percentage point.” Decision Desk HQ gives Democrats an 80 percent chance of flipping the chamber, with Democrats needing to pick up three seats.
What the midterms decide
Vietnam.vn framed the final sprint to the U.S. midterm elections as a decisive phase one week before November 3, when voters will renew 435 House seats and about one-third of Senate seats. The elections will determine the renewal of the 435 seats in the House of Representatives and about one-third of the seats in the Senate, and the vote will serve as a test of voters’ support for President Donald Trump’s policies. A Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted on October 26 put Trump’s approval rating at 32%, and 47% of registered voters supported the Democratic congressional candidate versus 36% for the Republican candidate.
The Hill described Johnson’s confidence with just one week to go until the 2026 midterms, while it noted that Republicans have pulled out of key races they need to defend, including New Jersey’s 7th Congressional District and Iowa’s 1st Congressional District. Vietnam.vn added that the economy and cost of living are major concerns for voters, and it cited a Pew Research Center poll that found 84% of registered voters considered the economy a determining factor in their vote choice.