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Polls predicted a close race. Trump won handily. Pollster says one thing is 'very clear.'

President-elect Donald Trump made a stunning political comeback, largely outperforming how pollsexpected him to do for the third election in a row.

In the days leading up to Election Day, poll after pollshowed him in a neck-and-neck race with Vice President Kamala Harris. State officials predicted the results could take days. Lawsuits from Trump-aligned groups were prepared to challenge the results. In the end, the race was called before most of the country woke up Wednesday. Trump won, and it was not particularly close.

But this election's results brought clarity to a growing theory about why polls have underestimated Trump's performance, according to Pew Research Center's vice president of methods and innovation Courtney Kennedy: Democrats participate in surveys more than Republicans.

"Rather than us being like 'oh, gee, we don't know what's going on,' no, no, no, this is very clear," Kennedy told USA TODAY in an interview. "This election answered the question of whether the underlying pattern of Democrats being more likely to take surveys than Republicans....is still with us or it's gone away. Answer: it's still with us, and some parts of the country it might have gotten worse."

Polls left people shocked in previous elections

Before Trump, former President Barack Obama overcame his polling forecast to beat Mitt Romney in 2012.

In 2016, popular pollster FiveThirtyEight showed Hillary Clinton leading Trump 45.7% to 41.8% on Election Day. In 2020, President Biden led Trump by 8.4 percentage points, a large lead in what still ended up being a close race.

Pew Research Center has previously reported that the number of pollsters has grown and polling methods have become more diverse since the 2016 election.

Kennedy said Pew has seen some success in its own polls with diversified methods. A big, annual survey conducted in the spring revealed some societal trends that came through on election night, including young men leaning towards Republicans and the proportion of Republicans across the country growing.

What polls got right and wrong in this election

Kennedy said the polling was better this election than recent years, and understanding its limitations can help pollsters make more adjustments in future elections.

"There was progress, but it was not perfect," she said, explaining that some pollsters consider making weighted adjustments to account for Republicans' lack of participation. "It's not a silver bullet, it doesn't make the poll perfect, but it helps reduce the extent of this non-response pattern that we're fighting."

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She also pointed out that Trump's overperformance compared to polls may be big on a cumulative, national scale, but final numbers may show that individual races were more accurate. She pointed to California, where votes are still being counted, and expects those numbers to shake out closer to what the polls suggested for the state.

Polls are not only used to show voters' support for candidates, but also to see what voters care most about in this election. Polls have by and large shown that the economy was the biggest issue for them and they favored Trump in helping to fix it. Kennedy said polls were also clear in showing dissatisfaction with the Biden administration and the direction the country was headed.

But marking a change from the Biden administrationwas something Harris struggled to do in her short presidential campaign.

"This election did illustrate that polls are better capturing the issues that matter, and what is motivating people, and moods, and feelings about the candidates...than prediction," Kennedy said.

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