'F*ck you!' A message to pollsters and election forecasters

By Filipp Piatov, BILD

For the third time, American institutes underestimated Donald Trump in the US presidential elections.

In 2016, Hillary Clinton was ahead in the polls, but Trump won the election.

In 2020, Trump was well behind Joe Biden in the polls — but narrowly lost.

In 2024, many pollsters predicted a close race with a narrow lead for Kamala Harris.

According to the New York Times, Trump averaged 48 percent in the polls and Harris 49 percent.

In three "swing states" Harris was tied with Trump, in two she was ahead and in two she was behind.

But Trump reaped a sovereign victory. He won almost all of the "swing states" and even received more votes nationally than Harris.

51.2 versus 47.4 percent – ??a clear result.

Left-liberal comedian Jon Stewart (“The Daily Show”) reacted particularly angrily. On his election night broadcast, he delivered a furious monologue that instantly went viral on the Internet:

"I want to send a quick message to the pollsters and the election forecasters: Fuck You!," Stewart said. "I don't want to listen to them again, never again. I never want to hear the expression: 'We have contacts with…' You have no idea about anything! And I don't care!”

Stewart continues the furious monologue: "I would like to point out that the lessons that our experts will draw from these results will certainly be wrong!"

Particularly odd: The extremely well-known polling institute, run by pundit J. Ann Selzer, had Harris four percentage points ahead in the state of Iowa; Trump won there clearly in 2020. Democrats cheered. But on election day, everything turned out differently: Trump won by 14 percentage points more than Harris.

The institute was shocked. "The poll results do not match what Iowa voters put in the ballot boxes today," the expert said. "I will review data from various sources to find out why this happened."

The New York Times offered a partial explanation for the question of why pollsters may have been so wrong: Democrats are far more likely to respond to calls and other polling methods than Trump supporters. In other words: Republicans don't take polls.

This explanation does not change the fact that the predicted close race turned out to be a false prediction.

The reactions of disappointed Democrats are correspondingly angry, and the joy of Republicans is correspondingly derisive.

In the Republican Party, there was a harsh attitude towards pollsters. "They still haven't figured out who Trump's voters are, because they haven't been interested in them at all."