# Opinion: Tevi Troy Says 90 Years of Polling Misses Are a Reason Not to Trust This Year's Polls, and to Vote

The Reagan Institute fellow walks through polling failures from the 1936 Literary Digest poll to 2016 and argues pollsters keep overcorrecting for the last mistake. It is a history lesson with an election-week conclusion.

- Section: [Opinion](https://rightnewsrightnow.com/opinion/)
- Published: 2026-10-31
- By: RightNewsRightNow Staff
- Canonical page: https://rightnewsrightnow.com/articles/opinion-tevi-troy-silent-majority-problem-pollsters-fighting-last-war-90-years-polling-failures-fox-news/

In a Fox News column, Tevi Troy, a senior fellow at the Ronald Reagan Institute and a former senior White House aide, argues that election polls fail often and in new ways.

The history. Troy starts on Oct. 31, 1936, when the Literary Digest, which had called every winner since 1916, predicted Alf Landon would beat Franklin Roosevelt. Its survey reached 10 million people, using phone books and car registration lists, and nearly 2.4 million replied. The sample was skewed and Roosevelt won easily. In 1948 the Chicago Daily Tribune ran "Dewey Defeats Truman" partly on faulty polling. John F. Kennedy was the first president closely tied to a polling firm, he writes, and the 1970s brought star pollsters such as Pat Caddell, Richard Wirthlin and Dick Morris.

The misses. Troy lists 2004 exit polls that pointed to a Kerry win, Mitt Romney's 2012 camp relying on overly rosy turnout assumptions, and 2016, when pollsters expected a Hillary Clinton victory. He adds a new wrinkle this year: partisan polls overstated progressive support in primaries, and some candidates dropped out on bad data.

The argument. Today's tools bring their own trouble. Nearly everyone has a phone, but few answer unknown numbers, so response rates fall and the unheard "silent majority" grows. That makes human modeling choices more important, and pollsters, like generals, "often fighting the last war," can overcorrect for what went wrong before. Polls, he says, are better as snapshots of opinion than predictions of who will actually vote.

The close. "Put not your trust in polls," he writes, "and get out and vote."

Note for readers: this is one writer's view. Troy does not say which way the polls are off this year, and the column makes no forecast. Our earlier opinion pieces on the polls, including Liz Peek's, are on the site.

## Source

Original reporting: [Fox News (opinion by Tevi Troy)](https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/silent-majority-problem-why-campaign-pollsters-keep-fighting-last-war-elections)