Pollster sets out the wild cards that could upend the 2026 midterm elections
Confidence requires clarity.
Welcome to Monday’s snow-bound edition of Washington Secrets, your guide to who’s doing the shoveling and who is being shoveled. Today we speak to one of the nation’s most accurate pollsters on the forces that will shape the midterm elections and the unknows that could throw off polls, we sift through thousands of complaints sent to broadcast regulators about Jimmy Kimmel, and we talk you through Trump’s new and old daily activity …
James Johnson, co-founder of J.L. Partners, nailed the 2024 presidential election. While many pollsters underestimated the level of support for Donald Trump, his final forecast before polling day gave the Republican candidate a 3-point lead in the popular vote and the biggest Electoral College advantage of any election model. Trump eventually won by about 1.5 points.
While other pollsters had to explain away their mistakes, Johnson’s approach catapulted his firm up the rankings. So what does he make of the midterm elections, and what are the factors that will sort the also-ran polling outfits from the elite?
Some years pollsters get it right. Some years it doesn’t work out so well. How do you think it looks for the midterms? Will pollsters get it right?
Pollsters had a terrible record in 2024 largely because they failed to pick up the more disengaged part of the electorate that voted for Trump. They had the same experience in 2020 and 2016. It’s hard to pick up these more disengaged voters, sometimes because they haven’t voted before.
The difference at the midterms is that the electorate is a bit more engaged, is a bit more online, is a bit more likely to have voted before. So on paper, it means it’s a bit easier to poll, and pollsters tend to do better.
That doesn’t mean that it’s going to be straightforward. A trend that makes me worry about this year, that we saw in 2024, is that there are a lot of online polls darting around now because they’re much cheaper to do, and they skewed some of the polling averages in the wrong direction in 2024.
As you think about launching your own polls, what are the calculations and assumptions you’re making about what the electorate will look like this time around?
This is the big thing to get right. It’s not so much how people are voting, but who’s going to vote. What you’re going to see is a lot of pollsters building what they think is the “2026 likely voter universe.” What I mean by that is, who do they actually think is going to turn out in the election?
At the moment, we have …
Confidence requires clarity.
Welcome to Monday’s snow-bound edition of Washington Secrets, your guide to who’s doing the shoveling and who is being shoveled. Today we speak to one of the nation’s most accurate pollsters on the forces that will shape the midterm elections and the unknows that could throw off polls, we sift through thousands of complaints sent to broadcast regulators about Jimmy Kimmel, and we talk you through Trump’s new and old daily activity …
James Johnson, co-founder of J.L. Partners, nailed the 2024 presidential election. While many pollsters underestimated the level of support for Donald Trump, his final forecast before polling day gave the Republican candidate a 3-point lead in the popular vote and the biggest Electoral College advantage of any election model. Trump eventually won by about 1.5 points.
While other pollsters had to explain away their mistakes, Johnson’s approach catapulted his firm up the rankings. So what does he make of the midterm elections, and what are the factors that will sort the also-ran polling outfits from the elite?
Some years pollsters get it right. Some years it doesn’t work out so well. How do you think it looks for the midterms? Will pollsters get it right?
Pollsters had a terrible record in 2024 largely because they failed to pick up the more disengaged part of the electorate that voted for Trump. They had the same experience in 2020 and 2016. It’s hard to pick up these more disengaged voters, sometimes because they haven’t voted before.
The difference at the midterms is that the electorate is a bit more engaged, is a bit more online, is a bit more likely to have voted before. So on paper, it means it’s a bit easier to poll, and pollsters tend to do better.
That doesn’t mean that it’s going to be straightforward. A trend that makes me worry about this year, that we saw in 2024, is that there are a lot of online polls darting around now because they’re much cheaper to do, and they skewed some of the polling averages in the wrong direction in 2024.
As you think about launching your own polls, what are the calculations and assumptions you’re making about what the electorate will look like this time around?
This is the big thing to get right. It’s not so much how people are voting, but who’s going to vote. What you’re going to see is a lot of pollsters building what they think is the “2026 likely voter universe.” What I mean by that is, who do they actually think is going to turn out in the election?
At the moment, we have …
Pollster sets out the wild cards that could upend the 2026 midterm elections
Confidence requires clarity.
Welcome to Monday’s snow-bound edition of Washington Secrets, your guide to who’s doing the shoveling and who is being shoveled. Today we speak to one of the nation’s most accurate pollsters on the forces that will shape the midterm elections and the unknows that could throw off polls, we sift through thousands of complaints sent to broadcast regulators about Jimmy Kimmel, and we talk you through Trump’s new and old daily activity …
James Johnson, co-founder of J.L. Partners, nailed the 2024 presidential election. While many pollsters underestimated the level of support for Donald Trump, his final forecast before polling day gave the Republican candidate a 3-point lead in the popular vote and the biggest Electoral College advantage of any election model. Trump eventually won by about 1.5 points.
While other pollsters had to explain away their mistakes, Johnson’s approach catapulted his firm up the rankings. So what does he make of the midterm elections, and what are the factors that will sort the also-ran polling outfits from the elite?
Some years pollsters get it right. Some years it doesn’t work out so well. How do you think it looks for the midterms? Will pollsters get it right?
Pollsters had a terrible record in 2024 largely because they failed to pick up the more disengaged part of the electorate that voted for Trump. They had the same experience in 2020 and 2016. It’s hard to pick up these more disengaged voters, sometimes because they haven’t voted before.
The difference at the midterms is that the electorate is a bit more engaged, is a bit more online, is a bit more likely to have voted before. So on paper, it means it’s a bit easier to poll, and pollsters tend to do better.
That doesn’t mean that it’s going to be straightforward. A trend that makes me worry about this year, that we saw in 2024, is that there are a lot of online polls darting around now because they’re much cheaper to do, and they skewed some of the polling averages in the wrong direction in 2024.
As you think about launching your own polls, what are the calculations and assumptions you’re making about what the electorate will look like this time around?
This is the big thing to get right. It’s not so much how people are voting, but who’s going to vote. What you’re going to see is a lot of pollsters building what they think is the “2026 likely voter universe.” What I mean by that is, who do they actually think is going to turn out in the election?
At the moment, we have …
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