“If you look at the full set of studies, it’s amazing how limited the evidence actually is,” Jon Krosnick, a specialist in polling methodology at Stanford University, told BuzzFeed News.
There are also more specific reasons to be skeptical about shy Trumpers carrying the 2016 presidential election. As FiveThirtyEight and The Upshot have pointed out, when the results from the primaries came in, there’s little evidence that online polls were more reliable — if anything, the telephone polls more accurately predicted the results.
What’s more, the contest between Trump and Clinton is vastly different from the Republican primaries. Not only is the electorate much bigger, but the race is between two candidates with historically high unfavorable ratings — which means embarrassment could cut both ways.
In July, the Pew Research Center found little difference between the willingness of Trump and Clinton supporters to be open about their preference: 8% of Clinton’s supporters and 7% of Trump’s said they would rather other people didn’t know.
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