Midterm elections results sparked a fresh round of scrutiny by disappointed Republicans after some surveys had predicted a red wave, according to the Washington Examiner.
The news outlet noted polls had projected Republicans would take control of the House and possibly the Senate. But with three undecided Senate races, the final outcome remained unclear.
According to Newsmax's numbers, 210 Republicans had secured seats in the House, compared to 194 for the Democrats, with many races still not called. It will take 218 seats for either party to secure a majority.
Expectations were set by a handful of polls, the Examiner noted. Those polls showed GOP candidates in a strong position to sweep competitive races. They also projected some Republican candidates doing well against Democrat candidates in what was considered safely blue territory.
"I think that some of the backlash we're seeing about polls — even though they were broadly right! — deals with a failure to distinguish between good and less good polls," wrote Natalie Jackson, research director at polling firm PRRI, on Twitter. "The narrative of a red wave was driven by a dump of Republican-leaning polls with opaque methods in the final two weeks."
The Examiner reported that recent elections suggest some polls were undercounting Republican candidates.
It noted RealClear Politics average of polls last year had New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy leading by 7.8 percentage points the night before the election. Murphy won by only 2.8 points.
And in 2016, many polls wrote off Donald Trump's chance of winning the White House in one of the most infamous misses in history by pollsters.
The news outlet said those examples and others have led many analysts to put more stock in polls during this year's midterms that revealed Republicans performing above expectations.
In Georgia, for example, the final RealClear Politics average showed Republican Herschel Walker ahead of incumbent Raphael Warnock 48.8% to 47.4%. Newsmax numbers show Warnock with 49.42% of the vote to Walker's 48.52 with the candidates headed for a runoff.
The polls also appear to have not been able to gauge the strong support for abortion, according to the Examiner.
A CNN-SSRS poll from late October showed that 51% of voters listed "the economy and inflation" as their top issue when picking a candidate; just 15% listed abortion.
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