Blogs

In both the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections, pollsters underestimated Donald Trump's performance. Compared to 538's election day polling averages, the Democratic candidate's national lead over Trump was 3.9 points lower than the polls predicted in 2020 and 1.8 points lower in 2016.

The current models of commissioning and running online surveys — either directly using panels or working through traditional market research agencies — are fundamentally flawed. Both models are painful, slow, and manual, and they are holding research and insights teams at comms firms back. These teams are not able to deliver insights at the pace and quality that their clients need.

Following the first presidential debate between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, we used our qualitative research tool, Focaldata AI, to gather debate viewers’ opinions on the event.

The first public US presidential election MRP poll from Focaldata finds that Donald Trump is narrowly on course for a second term in the White House, defeating Democratic candidate Kamala Harris.

Imagine you’re launching a time-critical political campaign and want to gather some information to write your survey. There’s no time for focus groups: the vote is only a few weeks away and your qual recruiters can’t convene the key swing groups you really need. What do you do?

On Thursday 22nd August, we hosted a webinar live from Chicago on on the state of the US presidential race. Listen back to the discussion inside primer on the presidential race, the state of US polling and a walk-through our own recent swing state polls.