REALITY CHECK

NBC Data Guru Warns of Major Election ‘Wildcard’

Steve Kornacki said Democrats could see a “very big night” but warned that polls have overlooked one key group in the past.

Midterm polling may be showing positive signs for Democrats, but NBC News’ chief data analyst said a “wildcard possibility” still remains.

Steve Kornacki said Democrats hold a “pretty sizeable lead” of nine points on the generic ballot, which asks voters which party they want to see control Congress, but warned that polls have a history of missing Republican and pro-Trump voters “badly.”

“A lot of people have trust issues with polls over the years,” Today show co-host Savannah Guthrie told Kornacki on Tuesday. “How do you analyze that as we’re going into Election Day?”

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“There are reasons why the polls could be correct—and this could be a very big night for Democrats,” Kornacki replied.

The NBC data guru pointed to President Donald Trump’s record-low approval rating and poor reviews of his handling of the economy and inflation—two issues that voters said they care most about heading into the midterms.

A Gallup poll earlier found that 50 percent of voters view the economy as an “extremely important” issue, and an AP-NORC survey similarly found that 85 percent of voters ranked the economy as their top issue and 84 percent said the cost of living was their second-biggest concern.

“We see very low marks for him there. So you can make an argument that the polls are pointing to something real,” Kornacki said. “But, like you said, in the Trump era in particular, we’ve seen these elections where the polls haven’t just missed—they’ve missed badly. And they’ve missed in a specific way in the Trump era: they’ve missed Republican voters, pro-Trump voters, especially in states like some of these battleground states, Iowa and Ohio, some of these Midwest states.”

“Kansas would be one of them potentially tonight to look at. So you have to keep that in mind,” he continued. “Some things that pollsters are telling us right now is that they are getting a lot more responses from Democrats than Republicans in these polls. Now they have ways to try to correct that, but that does raise a wildcard possibility here.”

Various polls have predicted that Democrats could retake the House, while the Senate remains a toss-up.

On his final forecast, top data analyst Nate Silver said it would be a “major surprise” if Democrats don’t win back control of the House, while his FLIPR model gave the Democratic Party an 80 percent chance of flipping enough seats to seize the Senate.

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