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The Democratic Party has high expectations from these important American midterm elections which are going to be held on November 3.
On one hand, Republican President Donald Trump's popularity is historically very low. On the other hand, the American people are angry with the rising prices of food items and daily bills.
The poll surveys coming for the last several months are also favorable for the Democrats, indicating good news for them.
According to the survey, Democratic candidates are leading on 218 seats, much more than the 218 seats required to gain control over the lower house of the US Parliament or the House of Representatives.
Even in important Senate contests, Democratic candidates are either tied or appear to be in slight lead.
A recent New York Times poll showed a tie for the South Carolina Senate seat.
This is the same state where Donald Trump won in 2024 by a margin of 18 percentage points.
Recent CNN polls show Democrats gaining in Texas, Kansas and Maine.
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But will these surveys prove correct?
Trump won by proving the poll surveys wrong during the presidential election.
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In recent years, there have been many examples in American politics when opinion polls could not accurately predict the election results. Many times even the surveys conducted a few days before the elections have proved wrong.
Donald Trump had performed better than the polls had predicted when he won the presidential elections in 2016 and 2024.
He had a minor defeat in 2020. Before that election, most surveys had shown Democratic candidate Joe Biden getting a more comfortable victory.
Earlier this year, polls indicated that Abdul El-Sayed could win the Democratic Senate primary in Michigan by a double-digit margin.
But the result was limited to just one percent difference.
Even during the Democratic gubernatorial primary in Wisconsin, a candidate was shown to have a lead of about 20 points in several surveys.
However, that candidate lost the election by a very narrow margin.
One reason why Donald Trump performed better than expected in the last presidential elections is believed to be that his supporters turned out to vote in large numbers.
Many of these people were those who generally did not vote regularly. This unexpected trend has been one of the main reasons for some major survey errors in recent years. However, in most cases the estimates in reputable surveys were proved wrong by only a few percentage points.
But in a tightly contested election, these few percentage points can make the difference between a candidate's victory and defeat. And this year the contest on many important seats of the Senate is limited to these very small margins.
Why are poll surveys proving wrong?
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According to Clifford Young, president of Ipsos Public Affairs, a political and market-related survey organization, opinion polling has become more difficult in recent years.
One reason for this is that American people are abandoning the use of landline phones. They also screen out phone calls, making it difficult to contact them.
Additionally, many of the people whom survey companies are able to contact are no longer as willing to participate in surveys as they used to be.
Young says, "Conservatives, especially the more extreme right wing, are anti-establishment by nature. They don't want to participate in anything. They hate the whole system. That's the biggest challenge."
If Republican voter turnout is being systematically underestimated, and polling companies do not take this into account when developing their polling models, their data could be skewed in favor of the Democrats.
This is one of the reasons why it is becoming difficult for pollsters to predict what the actual picture of voters will be in the elections.
What to expect from the poll survey of midterm general elections?
In recent years, midterm general election surveys have proven to be relatively more accurate. One reason for this was that Donald Trump was not on the election ballot. Trump has a special ability to motivate such Americans to vote, who generally feel disappointed or alienated from politics.
In the 2022 elections, polls have indicated that the Democrats may prove the general political predictions wrong. According to these surveys, despite Joe Biden's low popularity, the Democrats will not face a major defeat in the elections.
Although the party lost control of the House of Representatives, the margin of defeat was very small.
Also, the Democrats maintained their control over the US Senate. Some big upheavals were definitely seen in the results of the primary elections held this year.
But Clifford Young says that these contests for selecting candidates have historically been quite volatile. In such elections, voters often take their decisions at the last moment.
According to him, this should not be considered as an indication that the surveys for the current general elections will prove to be wrong.
Opposition's performance in midterms
It is considered common for the President's party to perform poorly in midterm elections. The biggest example of this in recent years was seen in 2010 when the Democrats were in power.
In that election, the Republican Party had won more than 60 seats in the House of Representatives. He also strengthened his position in the Senate.
At that time the American economy was struggling to recover from the financial crisis. Additionally, there was concern among conservative voters about President Barack Obama's health care reforms.
Polls at that time had predicted a Republican victory, but such a huge victory was not expected.
This time the situation is reversed.
The Democrats are in opposition and the economy is among voters' biggest concerns.
But there are many reasons due to which the performance of the Democrats may not be as good as is believed based on history or as some people expect.
This is the situation when Donald Trump's popularity figures are very low.
The first reason is that in many of the areas where the contest is considered important in this election, Trump had easily won the presidential election held only two years ago.
In other words, this ground can be considered quite favorable for the Republican Party. The second reason is that there have been changes in the electoral boundaries of the House of Representatives in the last few years. Due to these changes, now fewer seats go from one party to another than before.
The third reason is that political polarization in the country has increased more than ever before. Due to this, the number of voters who can change their support during elections has reduced.
Some experts even describe the voter class as "consolidated" or "stable". Apart from this, the Republican Party has an edge in the matter of donations and election funding.
Because of this lead, he has had hundreds of millions of dollars available to spend on advertising against his opponents in the final weeks.
President Trump is holding rallies on recently won seats, opposition is excited
Opinion polling models try to understand the changing political environment and voter trends.
A well-designed survey also takes into account factors that may make its results less reliable.
Every survey has a fixed error limit or margin of error.
This is a statistical level of uncertainty, which is based on the ratio of the number of people included in the survey to the entire population.
When results from multiple surveys are averaged together, they can provide more accurate estimates than any single survey.
For now, even after taking into account the polling error seen in presidential elections in recent years, the indications are that the Democrats may fare well on November 3.
Furthermore, the surveys may be wrong in either direction.
In last year's state-level and special elections, Democrats performed better than most polls had predicted.
At that time his supporters had come to vote in much greater numbers than expected.
In the last days of the campaign, seeing Donald Trump holding rallies in the states where he won comfortably in 2024 is being considered an encouraging sign for the Democrats.
This has strengthened the hope of the Democrats that their candidates will be seen in a difficult situation in the internal surveys of the Republican Party.
However, there is always the possibility that voters may change their mind by election day.
Many times the inclination of voters changes at the last moment. This can change the entire picture of the electoral contest.
Many times it also happens that the undecided voters, who are still an important group in these elections, move towards one party in large numbers.
There is always some uncertainty in opinion polls.
Understanding and handling this uncertainty is the art that goes along with the science of surveying.
"I think we're doing a better job now than ever before," says Clifford Young.
"But our problem is not just about surveyors. Part of the problem is that we are trying to understand human behavior. And understanding humans is not easy."
Published by Collective Newsroom for the BBC.
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