Most Accurate Pollster of 2016's 'Red Wave' Predictions Failed

In 2016, conservative pollster Robert Cahaly and his newly created firm, the Trafalgar Group, became overnight sensations as one of the only polling firms to predict Donald Trump's victory over Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election.

Using a method that relies on heavy weighting of "shy" Trump voters most pollsters miss, Cahaly has become revered by conservatives in recent years as one of the few pollsters in the country who can accurately predict the voting behaviors of the modern Republican base.

Fast forward six years, however, and Cahaly has emerged as one of this election cycle's most inaccurate forecasters following a series of incorrect forecasts of several battleground states in the 2022 midterms that were out of step with most mainstream pollsters.

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According to a Newsweek review of two dozen polls Trafalgar conducted in the weeks prior to Election Day, just five correctly predicted the winner within the poll's final margin of error. Six races Cahaly polled are still tight and have yet to be decided, even though Trafalgar projected most to be easy wins for Republicans. One poll—a survey of the Ohio Senate race—predicted a double-digit win for Republican J.D. Vance, who eventually won the race by six points.

Every other prediction Trafalgar made in the closing weeks, however, missed the mark entirely.

Trafalgar predicted Republican Tim Michels to unseat Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers by 2 points. Evers won by three.

In New Mexico, Republican Mark Ronchetti was anticipated to score a 1-point upset of Democratic Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham. She ended up winning by more than 6 points. In New Hampshire, Don Bolduc was supposed to win by 1 point. He lost handily.

And in Pennsylvania's Senate race, Trafalgar's 2-point favorite, Mehmet Oz, ultimately lost by 4 points.

It's not the first time Cahaly has called races wrong. In the lead-up to the 2020 presidential election, Cahaly defied the polling consensus and predicted Trump to win reelection, only for him to incorrectly predict the result in five battleground states won by Biden.

He's also called races correctly, or at least captured a trend. Cahaly accurately predicted a close gubernatorial race in the deep blue stronghold of New York, a race Democratic Governor Kathy Hochul won by 6 points, and he was shockingly close to the final results in statewide races in Wisconsin, Missouri, North Carolina and Georgia.

But some of his projections heading into Tuesday night were downright baffling.

In the Colorado Senate race, he predicted Republican Joe O'Dea would lose to incumbent Democratic Senator Michael Bennet in a 2-point squeaker. Bennet won by double digits.

On the gubernatorial ticket, Trafalgar predicted Heidi Ganahl would run incumbent Democrat Jared Polis to single digits. She did not.

And in Washington, Democrat Patty Murray—the 1point favorite in Trafalgar polling—was leading by more than a dozen points as of Thursday, her reelection to the U.S. Senate already decided days earlier.

It's unclear what went wrong. As of late Thursday afternoon, the typically prolific Cahaly had not posted on Twitter since Election Day and, after serving as an election night analyst for the Daily Wire, he has not made any major media appearances. Newsweek has contacted the Trafalgar Group for comment, and will update this story with any explanation provided.

Some, however, had theories.

In the closing weeks of the campaign, Trafalgar was one of several conservative-leaning pollsters behind a dizzying number of battleground state polls that, in aggregate, appeared to indicate Republicans were in for a big night.

Some candidates deemed vulnerable, like Hochul, sought to downplay the numbers, specifically calling out outfits like Trafalgar as simply producing numbers Republicans wanted to see, and skewing the narrative of Democrats' vulnerability.

"All we have to do is see the name Trafalgar. It's gonna show that we're neck and neck, or shows that Lee Zeldin's beating me today. Our own polls show that that's wildly wrong," Hochul said on MSNBC the week before Election Day. "But you're making money off of it. You're getting super-billionaire donors to dump millions and millions of dollars in negative ads against me to prop up your election because you gave them a fake poll. Democrats are too honest to do that. We're not playing that game."

Some examples were obvious. One Trafalgar Group poll showed New York's Democratic Attorney General Letitia James—a key political opponent of Trump—down by just a single point to Republican candidate Michael Henry.

She won by nearly double digits.

"So no legitimate media outlet is ever going to report a Trafalgar poll again, right?" tweeted Matt McDermott, a Democratic strategist, on election night.