If the polls are correct, Democrats are likely to have a great year in the 2026 midterm election, now less than two weeks away.
In the Generic Congressional Vote Average, Democrats are currently ahead by 8.6 percentage points, which is 0.2 points more than their final vote average in 2018 (8.4 points), when Democrats won 41 House seats.
Democrat candidates for Senate are also leading in Texas (by 2.2 percentage points); Ohio (by 2.4 points); Michigan (by 2.6 points); Maine (by 1.6 points); Alaska (by 2.2 points); Georgia (by 8.6 points); and North Carolina (by 9.0 points).
If those polls become reality, Democrats would almost certainly win the U.S. House of Representatives and take control of the Senate by a 52-48 margin, gaining five seats.
But here’s the million-dollar question: How likely are the polls to be correct?
Polling Errors in 2020
While polling is often seen as generally reliable, polls can also be wrong – and sometimes, very wrong.
In the 2020 presidential election, multiple polls showed then-candidate Joe Biden leading President Donald Trump by double digits. The Economist/YouGov’s final poll had Biden leading by 10 percentage points. CNBC/Change Research also had Biden up by 10 points. Quinnipiac had Biden up by 11 points. NBC News/Wall Street Journal had Biden up by 10 points. And the final CNN poll had Biden up by 12 percentage points just two weeks ahead of the election.
The final Real Clear Politics (RCP) average had Biden ahead by 7.2 percentage points.
In the end, Biden won the national popular vote by just 4.5 points.
Similar polling errors occurred at the state-level that year, too.
In Florida, the final RCP average had Biden up by 0.9 percentage points. The last Quinnipiac poll had Biden up by 5.0 points. President Trump won the state handily by 3.3 points.
In Wisconsin, the final RCP polling average had Biden leading by 6.7 percentage points. The last Reuters/Ipsos poll projected Biden to win by 10 points, while The New York Times/Siena poll found Biden up by 11 points. And in one of the worst polls of that entire election cycle, the last ABC News/Washington Post poll said that Biden was leading by a whopping 17 points at the end of October.
Biden ended up winning by just 0.7 percentage points.
In Michigan, the final RCP average showed Biden up by 4.2 percentage points. Three of the last five polls had Biden up by 7 points. The final CNN poll showed Biden up by 12 points while the last Reuters/Ipsos poll showed Biden up 10 points.
The final result: Biden won by just 2.7 percentage points.
In 2020’s most crucial Senate races, the polls were also disastrously off. In the Maine Senate race, every single poll conducted that year projected Democrat Sara Gideon to beat incumbent Republican Susan Collins. The final three polls of the race showed Gideon up by 6 percentage points, 4 points and 7 points, respectively.
Susan Collins easily won the race by 8.8 percentage points. This means the last three polls were off by anywhere between 12.8 and 15.8 percentage points.
Polls were also off by a similar margin in North Carolina that year.
Recent Polling Errors
Yet, polling errors aren’t just a thing of the past.
In the 2025 Virginia governor’s race, Democrat Abigail Spanberger led Republican Lieutenant Governor Winsome Earle-Sears in the last four polls by 10 percentage points, 9 points, 7 points and 12 points, respectively. But Spanberger overperformed the polls, winning by 15.2 percentage points.
Even greater errors have occurred this year, too.
In the Michigan Senate Democrat primary, the final four polls showed Abdul El-Sayed leading challenger Rep. Haley Stevens by 14 percentage points, 15 points, 10 points and 16 points, respectively.
El-Sayed ended up winning by only 1.0 percentage point. Most polls were off by double digits.
In the Texas Senate Republican primary, the final three polls showed Attorney General Ken Paxton beating Senator John Cornyn by 10 percentage points, 22 points and 12 points, respectively. Paxton ended up winning by 27.6 points.
In the Minnesota governor Republican primary, the final three polls showed Mike Lindell beating Rep. Lisa Demuth by 6 percentage points, 9 points and 5 points, respectively. Demuth ended up winning by 10.9 percentage points.
Some political analysts speculate polls in recent years have tended to favor Democrats because they are more likely to respond to pollsters than Republicans.
“When you’re seeing high-propensity Democrats [responding to polls] at twice the rate of high-propensity Republicans, when we know that the turnout on both sides would be roughly evenly paired, that’s a warning sign for polling in this cycle,” Patrick Ruffini, a founding partner at Echelon Insights, recently told Politico.
Likewise, Fox News Chief Political Anchor Bret Baier recently explained how Republicans could retain control of the Senate if polls are wrong at similar margins of past elections.
“Republicans have tended to outperform the polls in some of these past Senate races in some of these different states,” Baier explained. “If that pattern holds, the Republican path to keeping the Senate becomes much more clear.”
Sometimes the polls are right. Sometimes they’re not – and dramatically so. Will the polls be spot on when we watch the results roll in on November 3? That remains to be seen.
But what’s clear is that polls do not decide elections. Voters do.
Related articles and resources:
Christians: Go Out and Vote This November
Christians Must Get Out to Vote This November
Understanding the Importance of Voting
5 Easy Ways Christians Can Get Involved in Politics
Are You Registered To Vote? If Not, Today is the Day to Do It.
Here is Why I Will Never Trust the Polls Again, and Why You Shouldn’t Either.
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