2028: Pollsters/MSM Have One Last Chance To Get It Right-Or They Are Gone.
Looking to the 2028 presidential election, pollsters and mainstream media (MSM) face a make-or-break moment. Their credibility, already shattered by repeated failures in 2016, 2020, and 2024—where they consistently underestimated Donald Trump’s support—has hit rock bottom. The 2024 election, in particular, exposed systemic flaws, epitomized by the infamous Iowa Poll by J. Ann Selzer, once hailed as the “queen of polling.” Her final poll, predicting a Kamala Harris lead of 47% to 44% in Iowa, missed the mark by a staggering 16 points, with Trump winning 56% to 43%. The debacle led to widespread mockery, accusations of election interference, and Selzer’s abrupt retirement from election polling, with her issuing a reflective statement many saw as a hollow apology. This disaster, alongside the MSM’s dismissal of accurate “right-wing polls,” underscores the urgent need for reform if they hope to remain relevant in a rapidly evolving information landscape.
A Legacy of Failure
In 2016, polls projected a Hillary Clinton landslide—The New York Times gave her a 91% chance of winning—yet Trump’s victory blindsided them. In 2020, Joe Biden’s win was called, but margins in battleground states were off. By 2024, the pattern was undeniable: polls again missed Trump’s resilient base, particularly in swing states. The Selzer Iowa Poll became the poster child for this failure. Once celebrated for her accuracy, Selzer’s final 2024 poll fueled false hope among Democrats, predicting a Harris surge driven by older women over reproductive rights. Trump’s 13-point victory in Iowa exposed the poll as a desperate attempt to influence the election, leading to her retirement amid ridicule and a lawsuit from Trump alleging “consumer fraud.”
The public may not understand technical polling issues like respondent bias, and the public now grasps the margin of error concept, often used as an excuse by pollsters and MSM to deflect criticism of their failures and that aggregation of quality polls, over, time and directionally, is the best indicator we have of the actuality of a contest. But some have caught on to key flaws. “All Voters” (AV) surveys, including non-voters, are widely seen as useless. “Registered Voters” (RV) surveys are better but often serve as propaganda tools to shape narratives. “Likely Voters” (LV) surveys, used in final polls, are more accurate but tainted by “herding,” where pollsters adjust results to match consensus, as Matt Taibbi detailed in his 2025 Racket News analysis (https://www.racket.news/p/how-americas-accurate-election-polls?r=p6eay).
The Aggregation Debacle and MSM Bias
Poll aggregators, meant to balance errors, made things worse in 2024. They included dubious polls like Big Caravan—now defunct—which showed a heavy bias toward Harris. Taibbi notes these unvetted polls rendered aggregates useless, skewing perceptions of the race. Meanwhile, the MSM and aggregators attacked “right-wing polls” like Atlas Intel and Rasmussen, accusing them of distorting aggregates to favor Trump. Some even excluded these polls entirely, claiming they didn’t fit the narrative of a Harris lead. Wikipedia and MSM apologists later tried to justify this exclusion, but their reasoning was exposed as groundless when Atlas Intel and Rasmussen proved the most accurate, with swing-state errors of just 0.8 and 0.9 points, respectively. In contrast, MSM-backed polls like NYT/Siena (3.3 points), Marist (3.1 points), and YouGov (3.8 points) were way off. Taibbi highlights the irony: Harris campaign guru David Plouffe admitted post-election, “At no point did our data show Harris had a lead over Trump,” revealing the MSM’s narrative as a deliberate distortion.
Why 2028 Is Make-or-Break
The information ecosystem has transformed. X dominates as a real-time gauge of sentiment, while independent voices on Substack and podcasts outpace legacy media. A 2025 USC study found 47% of Gen Z gets political news from social media, compared to 22% from traditional outlets. Polling struggles with declining landlines, online echo chambers, and “shy voters” who hide their preferences, making representative sampling nearly impossible for the ”legacy polls”.
For pollsters, 2028 demands a reckoning. They must abandon AV and RV surveys early, focusing on transparent LV models. They should leverage platforms like X for sentiment data and use anonymized techniques to counter respondent bias. The MSM must drop narrative-driven reporting, engage with X and independent voices, and diversify newsrooms to reflect the country’s ideological and geographic diversity. The Selzer disaster and the MSM’s baseless dismissal of accurate “right-wing polls” show how far they’ve strayed from objectivity—a trend they must reverse to survive.
The Cost of Another Failure
If 2028 repeats these mistakes, pollsters and MSM will become obsolete. The public is already turning to X, Substack, and AI platforms. Another miss could deepen distrust in democracy, as inaccurate polls and biased coverage fuel perceptions of fraud, as seen in 2024. A 2025 Gallup poll pegs media trust at 31%, down from 55% in 1999, while a 2024 Pew study found 60% of Americans call polls “often inaccurate.”
A Glimmer of Hope?
Some are adapting. Rasmussen Quantas and Big Data polls among others proved correct and what the MSM considered as “unconventional methods lacking in transparency” yielded accuracy in 2024, but these were considered as outliers. For pollsters and MSM to survive 2028, they must act now—rebuilding trust through transparency, innovation and humility. The Selzer debacle and the MSM’s exposed bias against “right-wing polls” serve as a stark warning: adapt, be honest or be left for dead.
‘RIGHT WING POLLS”
