Pollsters missed the mark again — but this time, it wasn't Republicans they underestimated

In the weeks leading up to Election Day, President repeatedly railed against public opinion polls that pointed to a potential blue wave for the Democrats in the midterms.

"I think its fake polls," the president argued. "A lot of the polls are rigged."

It was an argument repeated by other top Republicans.

"The polls are all wrong all around the country," House Speaker emphasized Sunday at a Trump rally in Iowa. "I'm telling you, they're undercounting Republicans because Republicans are not participating in these polls anymore."

While public opinion polls have a history over the past decade of undercounting GOP voters — especially MAGA supporters — this time, pollsters say Democratic support, rather than Republican turnout, was underestimated.

It was Democrats.

"Polls probably, on average, undercounted Democrats significantly," veteran pollster Chris Anderson, the longtime Democratic partner on the , said.

Anderson, pointing to the massive blue wave that allowed Democrats to decisively recapture the House and Senate majorities in the midterms, told Fox News Digital, "This is sort of a seismic election and you cant model for a seismic election. We definitely didnt undercount Republicans, thats for sure."

Daron Shaw, a veteran GOP pollster and the Republican partner on the Fox News Poll, emphasized, "If were talking about the direction of the polls, they were clearly correct."

But Shaw added "we probably underestimated Democratic vote share by a couple of points."

Shaw highlighted that "directionally, we knew heading into Election Day that Kansas was a dog fight. We knew that Texas was probably shifting blue. That was just something that people had trouble getting their heads around but the data were pretty clear on that. I guess on Texas, the magnitude was surprising."

Pollster David Paleologos, the director of the Suffolk University Political Research Center, agreed that "in general" there was "a slight undercount" of Democrats in public opinion surveys.

He noted that polls also undercounted Democrats in the 2025 gubernatorial elections in New Jersey and Virginia, where the Democratic candidates both won by larger-than-expected double-digit margins.

"We were low on the margins of victory," Paleologos told Fox News Digital. "We were all undercounting Democrats."

And pointing to the longstanding GOP case that MAGA voters are undercounted, Paleologos said, "I think to be fair going forward, it can't be a one-sided question anymore."