Pollster Frank Luntz spoke with Fox News’ Breat Baier and had some interesting things to say about the possible future of his profession.
Luntz said that if President Donald Trump defeats Joe Biden in the election, after polls showed Biden with a 5-6 point lead, his “profession is done.”
Luntz pointed to the horrendous job that pollsters did in the lead up to the 2016 election, where Hillary Clinton was shown to have a very similar lead over Trump.
Fox News has more on Frank Luntz's comments:
Republican pollster Frank Luntz told Fox News’ Bret Baier on Thursday night, that his "profession is done" if President Trump wins re-election come Nov. 3, and proves the national polls wrong yet again.
“I hate to acknowledge it, because that's my industry — at least partially — but the public will have no faith. No confidence. Right now, the biggest issue is the trust deficit,” Luntz said in response to Baier asking how pollsters will fare if they are wrong in predicting the 2020 presidential election. “Pollsters did not do a good job in 2016. So, if Donald Trump surprises people, if Joe Biden had a 5- or 6-point lead, my profession is done."
National polls largely show Biden with a lead over Trump with two weeks until the presidential election.
Real Clear Politics, which pools together several national polls and takes the average, shows Biden up by 7.9 points, though in battleground states the former vice president is only up by 3.8 points – well within margin of error, which generally hovers around plus or minus four points.
Hillary Clinton was projected to win in 2016, with polling consistently similar to Biden’s.
FiveThirtyEight’s election project gave Clinton an 86 percent chance of winning during this point in the last presidential race. Biden is currently projected to win with an 88 percent probability.
Luntz tweeted a similar message on Thursday.
The Hill with more about the possibilitiy of history repeating itself:
Many election forecasts, including from The New York Times and FiveThirtyEight, gave Clinton more than a 70 percent chance of winning the morning of Nov. 8, 2016.
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On Oct. 21, 2016, the Times "Upshot" even went as high as giving the former secretary of State a 93 percent chance to take the White House.
The RealClearPolitics index of polls gave Clinton a 3.2 percent advantage nationally on the eve of the election. The Democratic nominee captured the popular vote by 2.1 percentage points.
Biden currently leads Trump in the RealClearPolitics index of polls in key battleground states by 4.1 percentage points
Luntz may be out of a job, especially if the undecided voters really are leaning towards President Trump.
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