Study: Donald Trump may have more support than polls suggest
After noticing that Donald Trump typically does better in polls conducted online compared with those done via telephone, Morning Consult, a polling and market research company, wanted to understand why that is and which polls are more accurate.
Online polls often show Trump with the backing of almost four-in-ten Republican voters, while phone surveys usually have him with the support of one-third or fewer, the Los Angeles Times reports. Morning Consult polled 2,397 potential Republican voters earlier this month, and the respondents either spoke with a live pollster on the phone, took an online survey, or received a phone call where they responded to recorded questions by hitting phone buttons.
Polling director Kyle Dropp said Morning Consult found that voters "are about 6 points more likely to support Trump when they're taking the poll online than when they're talking to a live interviewer." Dropp said that among blue-collar Republicans, the results were roughly the same regardless of method, but among college-educated Republicans, Trump did 9 points better in the online poll. Dropp believes that people with college educations could be "less likely to say they support him when they're talking to a live human" due to the social-desirability bias, or the tendency of people to want to keep unpopular opinions to themselves. "It's our sense that a lot of polls are under-reporting Trump's overall support," he told the Times.
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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
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