The most common worries for 2020 polling, though, stemmed from the pandemic. Several pollsters said they worried that pollsters would estimate turnout incorrectly. “This is a perennial difficulty for pollsters and survey researchers, which the pandemic is making even thornier,” CBS News’s Kabir Khanna explained. Quinnipiac University Poll director Doug Schwartz offered an example: “With the coronavirus, there may be voters who tell pollsters that they’re voting but then their area experiences a spike in cases around Election Day, and they no longer feel safe going to the polls.” And Emerson’s Kimball and Morning Consult chief research officer Kyle Dropp both pointed out that voters’
increased access to mail voting makes turnout extra unpredictable. And since polls are only as good as their turnout model, this could lead to some polling misses this fall. (In fact, FiveThirtyEight’s model even built in an
extra layer of uncertainty this year because of the possibility that the pandemic will disrupt usual turnout patterns.