Public opinion surveys of voters leading up to the 2020 presidential election were the most inaccurate in 40 years, new research commissioned by the American Association for Public Opinion Research has concluded.

According to the Wall Street Journal, AAPOR convened an expert panel to look into public opinion polling during the last election cycle. The panel presented its preliminary findings during the AAPOR's annual conference, held virtually from May 3-14. Panelists found polls consistently overstated voter support for Democratic candidates in state and federal races, regardless of the type of polling used. In terms of the presidential race, polls were off by the largest margins since 1980, when pollsters failed to predict President Ronald Reagan's landslide win over President Jimmy Carter.

The reason for the skewed polls? President Donald Trump's supporters were much less likely to participate in polling than people who voted for Joe Biden, the Journal reported

"The people who responded to polls were different than those who didn't," said Joshua Clinton, a professor of political science at Vanderbilt University who led the review. "This is the first election where that was clear."

Pollsters are uncertain at this point how to address the problem in future polling, according to the newspaper.

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