Polling misses across Democratic primaries in Wisconsin and Michigan have exposed a mix of challenges for the industry, from late-breaking voters and unexpected turnout to a harder-to-solve problem of reaching the voters who ultimately decide elections.The discrepancies were striking. State Rep. Francesca Hong entered Tuesday’s Wisconsin Democratic gubernatorial primary as the clear favorite, with the latest public polling showing the socialist ahead by roughly 20 percentage points. Instead, Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley edged her by less than half a percentage point.
Republican pollster Frank Luntz captured the reaction with a tongue-in-cheek post Wednesday calling for “a total and complete shutdown of primary polling in the Midwestern United States until we can figure out what the hell is going on.”But interviews with pollsters involved in the races suggest there is no single explanation. Instead, they point to a combination of unusually high turnout, late-deciding voters, rapidly changing races, and a potentially deeper problem: Some Democratic primary voters may simply be less likely to answer polls in the first place.“It’s a little more complicated than that,” Democratic pollster Adam Carlson said of the perception that the polling was simply wrong. “I think we have to be honest that it was off.”But, he added, polling is “not fundamentally broken.”Wisconsin’s undecided voters break hard for Crowley
