Ann Selzer walked away from election polling less than two weeks after her final Iowa poll blew up.
Now the same industry has Democrats ahead in the Senate races in Ohio, Michigan and Iowa.
A Republican pollster went back and checked those three states, and the number he found should make Democrats nervous.
Patrick Ruffini Ran the Numbers on Six Years of Senate Polls
Patrick Ruffini of Echelon Insights analyzed the Senate polls in Iowa, Michigan and Ohio from 2018 through 2024.
He looked at where those polls stood 33 days before Election Day and compared them to the certified results from the MIT Election Lab.
The answer was brutal.
Ninety-three percent of those polls overstated the Democrat.
The average miss was 6.2 points in the Democrat's favor.
In midterm years alone, the miss grew to 6.6 points.
Ruffini's wider study of more than 3,000 Senate polls nationwide found 73 percent leaned Democrat.
That's not random noise.
Random noise misses in both directions.
The bias peaked in the summer months, then shrank as Election Day got closer.
Democrats are banking on their summer leads holding all the way to Election Day.
The Same Polls Buried Ernst, Vance and Moreno
Joni Ernst is the textbook case.
A month out in 2020, the polling average had Democrat Theresa Greenfield up 2.4 points in Iowa.
Ernst won by more than six.
Tim Ryan was supposed to give J.D. Vance a dogfight in Ohio in 2022, and Vance won by six.
In 2024, Sherrod Brown sat slightly ahead of Bernie Moreno a month before the election.
Moreno beat him by nearly four points.
Over in Michigan, the polls had Elissa Slotkin cruising by more than five points.
She hung on by about a third of a point.
And then there's Selzer.
Her final Iowa poll had Harris up 47 to 44 three days before the election.
Trump won Iowa 55.7 to 42.5.
Trump's lawyers later called her poll "not reality, it was election-interfering fiction."
The national picture wasn't much better.
In 2020, the polls had Joe Biden winning big, and his Electoral College win came down to roughly 43,000 votes across three states.
Brown, El-Sayed and Turek All Lead in the Same Polls
Look at the 2026 numbers through that lens.
In Ohio, Brown leads Republican Jon Husted 47.1 to 44 in the RealClearPolitics average as of October 3.
In Michigan, socialist Abdul El-Sayed leads Mike Rogers 48 to 44.5.
In Iowa, Democrat Josh Turek sits at 45.9 to Ashley Hinson's 45.6 – a statistical tie.
Apply the 6.2-point historical miss, and every one of those races flips red.
Even CNN's own data guru has run the numbers.
His math says a three-to-five-point polling miss, the kind voters have seen before, hands Republicans a 53 to 47 Senate.
The NRSC notes that GOP voters are just as eager to turn out as Democrats, and Republicans hold the registration edge in the states that decide the Senate.
NRSC National Press Secretary Bernadette Breslin warned that "Democrats should think twice before relying too heavily on the same rosy polling."
RedState's Adam Turner went race by race and likes Hinson, Rogers and Husted to pull it off.
CNN Is Still Shrinking the Selzer Disaster
The media hasn't learned a thing.
On CNN This Morning, Audie Cornish described the Selzer debacle as a poll that had Harris up by just a few points.
Her verdict: "It didn't turn out to be the case."
That's one way to describe a 16-point miss.
This is how the game works.
Polls only capture the people willing to answer them, and plenty of conservative voters don't trust strangers asking how they plan to vote.
So the surveys come back blue.
Then the press runs wall-to-wall coverage of a coming Democrat wave, hoping Republicans feel beaten before they ever cast a ballot.
Ernst didn't buy it in 2020.
Moreno didn't buy it in 2024.
Trump didn't buy it in Iowa, and he won by thirteen.
None of this means Republicans can coast.
NRSC Chairman Tim Scott put it bluntly: "No matter what state you're in, the margins are too thin."
He's right, and the Ruffini numbers are no excuse to stay home on November 3.
They're a reason to stop believing the doom headlines and show up anyway.
The polls have been wrong about these three states for six straight years.
Republican voters can make it seven.
Sources:
- Jim Hoft, "93% of Senate Polls in Iowa, Michigan and Ohio Overstated the Democrat," The Gateway Pundit, October 5, 2026.
- National Republican Senatorial Committee, "93% of Polls Overestimated Battleground Dems 1 Month Out From Election Day," National Republican Senatorial Committee, October 1, 2026.
- Becky Noble, "In Latest 'Duh' Moment, GOP Pollster Finds Dem-Favoring Polls 'Not Just Statistical Noise,'" RedState, August 19, 2026.
- Adam Turner, "The Rust-Belt Senate Races Are Very Susceptible to Democrat-Biased Polls," RedState, October 3, 2026.
- Benjamin Roberts, "Exclusive: Control of the Senate Hangs in the Balance," The Blaze, October 3, 2026.
- Brooke Singman, "Trump Sues Des Moines Register, Top Pollster for 'Brazen Election Interference,' Fraud Over Harris Poll," Fox News, December 16, 2024.
- Mark Finkelstein, "Cornish Shrinks a 16-Pt. Iowa Polling Miss, Pads GOP's Trouble With Dem Seats," NewsBusters, October 5, 2026.
- Jonathan Garber, "Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst Holds Off Dem Challenger Greenfield to Win Reelection," Fox News, November 4, 2020.
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