Polls missed bigger on the midterms than in 2016

The 2026 midterm elections saw a significant blue wave for Democrats, but polls failed to fully capture the magnitude of their victory. Surveys accurately predicted a Democratic surge, yet underestimated the extent of their lead. Experts point to a wider margin of error for Democrats compared to their 2016 and 2024 polling misses.

Democrats are projected to win the national House popular vote by about 13 percentage points, surpassing a Silver Bulletin polling average of 8.9 points. This gap is similar to the 2020 polling error that underestimated Republicans and is larger than the average partisan errors in previous years. The pollsters faced the challenge of accounting for Republican voters who may have been overlooked in their surveys.

Many organizations attempted to rectify this by applying political weighting based on party affiliation or past voting behavior. A recent Pew analysis revealed that approximately 70% of national polls utilized such weighting in 2024. However, the results from Tuesday's midterms raise questions about whether these efforts to correct past polling errors have inadvertently led to a new one.

Some pollsters that projected the largest Democratic margins actually came closest to the final outcome. AtlasIntel, for instance, ranked highest in a final national House polls ranking based on its projection of the popular-vote margin. AtlasIntel's final projection showed Democrats leading by 14.1 points, just 0.3 points away from its projected final margin of 13.8.

Other top-performing pollsters include Tufts University, New York Times/Siena, Change Research, and RMG Research.