Polling in 2022 was better than you think

With fewer than 720 days until the 2024 presidential election, we plan to continue examining important demographic trends that could shape the election and the country’s trajectory. For the next few weeks, we’ll comb through the surprising midterm results and explore what they tell us for future elections.

Our final polling average had Republicans favored on the generic ballot by a point and a half. Though millions of votes are still being counted on the West Coast, the best estimates point to an eventual generic ballot of around R+3, suggesting topline polling was quite strong in 2022. Demographic subgroup polling, too, proved largely accurate. The table below shows that in most cases the demographic averages we reported match the National Election Poll and AP/VoteCast surveys. …

In several preelection posts, we warned that Democratic margins with Hispanic voters would continue to fall. Our final average placed the Democratic advantage at about 18 points—nearly exactly what VoteCast and the exit polls later found. This represents a roughly 10-point drop from President Biden’s 2020 performance according to VoteCast.