Dem
54
Ties
2
GOP
44
The Pew Research Center has taken a first look at the 2026 polling. The polls clearly captured the voters' dark mood and desire to throw the bums out. They also identified a huge enthusiasm gap, with Democrats far more enthused about voting than Republicans. The generic poll tended to end up around D+8 to D+11. In the end, it was even more, about D+13. The polls correctly foresaw a blue wave, but it was bigger than they had predicted. On the morning of Election Day, we were predicting 54 Senate seats for the Democrats. Currently they are at ... 54 Senate seats, but with the possibility of picking up two more, in Alaska and Mississippi, respectively. We did not see South Carolina or Mississippi as Democratic pickups although we did see them as near misses.
In most of the contentious races, the polls correctly nailed the winner, but in many states underestimated how big the wave would be, by 2 or more points. The average across all Senate races might end up being 4 points, with the Democrats, not the Republicans, being underestimated this time. It wasn't due to "shy Democrats," though. It may have been due to underestimating Democratic turnout. The models for guessing who would vote might have been wrong, with people not expected to vote actually showing up and voting, mostly for Democrats. Those damn marginal voters again.
One group that the pollsters missed was the bro-type low-engagement young male voters who are fans of Joe Rogan. They went for Trump in 2024 but swung massively to the Democrats this time. That was unexpected. Undoubtedly, we will have more polling postmortems as more data rolls in. (V)