Posted at Hartmann Report on Nov. 3, 2026
Are GOP Voter Purges the Hidden Reason Pollsters Keep Getting Elections Wrong?
The polls may show Democrats ahead, but are they missing the Red state voters who won't be allowed to cast a ballot?
It’s Election Day and if you believe the polls both Democrats and democracy itself are heading for a very good night. The final generic ballot averages show Democrats about 9 points ahead, which is the widest margin by which either party has carried a midterm in years.
And while I hope those numbers hold up — or even turn out to be conservative — I’m haunted by the last week of October of 2024 when Kamala Harris had a solid 4-point lead over Trump in the national polls but still lost the election by an average of 2.7 points, a spread of almost 7 percent. Fully sixty percent of the 81 national polls taken in the final two weeks before the election had Harris winning big.
According to the pundits, there are a zillion “reasons” for the big spread between the polling and the final vote (she also lost the popular vote by about 1.5%) but the biggest variable has never been included in the polling and should be: voter purges by Republican secretaries of state in Red states with large Blue cities.
