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Stung By 2016 Election Outcome, Pollsters Tweak Their Techniques for 2020

Kane Farabaugh

   MADISON, WIS. - As she looks ahead to the 2020 Presidential election,
   it's hard to reconcile the past for Egg Harbor, Wisconsin voter
   Bernadette Rainsford, who believes there is one key reason why Donald
   Trump won her state in 2016.

   "Hillary didn't get here last time," Rainsford told VOA. "We thought it
   might have helped."

   It's a complaint echoed by many Wisconsin Democrats who believe Hillary
   Clinton could have won the election if she had personally rallied
   voters here in the final weeks of the campaign.

   But polling in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania -- three key
   midwestern states Trump narrowly won - showed Clinton didn't need to.

   "Over 100 polls were done in those three states, and only one in
   Michigan in October ever showed Trump actually leading," said Charles
   Franklin, Director of the Marquette University Law School Poll, which
   then and now, gauges voter sentiment monthly.

   "That cumulative public polling, including mine, was part of the reason
   that the evidence pointed to a Clinton win here. It was a sweeping
   error," he added.

   An error in several states in the lead-up to the 2016 presidential vote
   perhaps, but the numbers matched up nationally.

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