Key Detail in Polls May Be Hiding GOP Victories, Political Consultant Warns

A GOP strategist says the deadlocked U.S. Senate race between Democratic Congressman Tim Ryan and his Republican opponent, J.D. Vance, might actually be closer than national pundits believe, citing a number of flawed assumptions in some polls he thinks could be causing pollsters to overestimate Democrats' chances in this year's midterm elections.

In a Washington Post op-ed, crisis communications expert and a onetime consultant to presidents Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, Mark R. Weaver, wrote that he believed several pollsters were underestimating the number of Trump voters in their survey samples over the last several months, lending credence to a polling advantage for Democrats Weaver said may not actually exist.

The Ohio-based strategist initially cited a Marist poll published on September 21 that showed the race between the two men in a dead heat, followed by recent polls of the U.S. Senate races in the battleground states of Pennsylvania and North Carolina where the Republican and Democratic candidates appeared to be neck and neck with one another.

All three, he said, appeared to have overestimated the number of college-educated voters in their poll sample by eight points or more, giving Democrats an inherent advantage in the final projections.

The reason for this, he wrote, likely wasn't bias on the part of the pollster but, rather, his own observed experience working with conservative candidates and causes. Namely, the high levels of institutional mistrust carried by conservative voters in today's tense political environment.

"This isn't just about a single poll or a single state," he wrote. "I regularly talk with pollsters and campaigns, and I hear a common lament: Trump voters distrust pollsters and the media that reports on poll results, and simply won't participate, out of protest or paranoia."

Notably, most pre-election polls overstated Joe Biden's prospective lead over Donald Trump in the national vote for president, Pew Research data show.

In fact, national surveys of that election were the least accurate in 40 years, a 2021 report from the American Association for Public Opinion Research stated. The report prompted a period of soul-searching among national pollsters about what went wrong, from undersampling of working-class voters to a missed acknowledgment most voters simply don't respond or engage with polls.

Weaver argued the absence of working-class whites in the poll data—the biggest shortcoming of the polls he observed, and a defining characteristic of pollsters' missed call in the 2016 presidential race between Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton—could play a significant factor in the broader landscape of the 2022 midterm elections.

After two consecutive election cycles in which Democrats won the national Hispanic vote by 38 points or more, recent polling by MSNBC and Telemundo shows Democrats leading Republicans by just 21 points with that demographic. Democrats' advantage among Hispanic males without a college degree sits at just 8 points over Republicans.

Some observers—including The New York Times' chief political analyst, Nate Cohn—have argued Democrats' strong advantage in the national generic poll after the repeal of Roe v. Wade could help Democrats overcome the structural disadvantage they face following the 2020 redistricting cycle.

But Weaver noted conservative voters' persistent levels of mistrust in national institutions are likely to obscure the state of any given race until the polls are finally closed.

"One thing seems obvious: Until most voters trust the institutions and individuals in the political sphere, submerged voters will sink ever deeper, not surfacing until Election Day, to cast their previously untracked votes," he wrote.

Newsweek reached out to Weaver for comment.