Revealed: British Pollster Who Nailed the US Election Explains How Her Team Did It

The final RealClearPolitics national head-to-head average in the 2024 election gave Democrat Kamala Harris a razor thin lead over Republican Donald Trump -- one-tenth of one percentage point. The polling aggregator had Trump barely ahead, by the same microscopic margin, in their multi-candidate field average. Trump went on to become the first GOP nominee to win the popular vote in two decades, with an advantage of millions of votes, adding up to a margin of just over one-and-a-half percentage points. RCP's state-level averages predicted Trump would win enough battlegrounds to win 287 Electoral College votes, enough to secure the presidency, but showed Harris in Michigan and Wisconsin (it should be noted that various other aggregators were less bullish on Trump's chances, across all of these metrics). Trump swept all of the swing states, of course, hitting 312 electoral votes.

One outfit that was not surprised by any of these developments was JL Partners, a British-American polling firm. Scarlett Maguire is a director at JL Partners, whom I have the pleasure of meeting in London recently. She penned an op/ed in the Times just after our election, noting how accurate her firm's data turned out to be and juxtaposing their strong results with the now-infamous Ann Selzer disaster:

The Selzer poll was not weighted to party registration and its old-fashioned methodology favoured older liberal women who were notoriously more prepared to give pollsters their time on the phone. At my firm, JL Partners, we did not let the poll change our view. As a result we emerged with one of the most accurate projections for the electoral college...and were one of very few polling organisations that predicted Trump winning the popular vote...There will be many post-mortems into what went wrong for the Harris campaign, but a significant part of the blame must fall on those who chose to run a campaign that placed such strong emphasis on reproductive rights, despite it being nowhere near the most pressing issue for voters — women very much included.

Maguire joined me on my radio show this week to explain how her organization managed to more-or-less nail the final result, with insights into their methodology, and how they also conducted focus groups in swing states to both listen to real voters, but also to compare what voters were actually saying (qualitative) with what their numbers were showing (quantitative). This is a fascinating and worthwhile conversation, especially for political data nerds. Other, less successful pollsters might be well-advised to listen to what she has to say. Anyone with even a passing interest in British politics should listen to the end, for a short debrief on the new Labour government's woes and early-onset unpopularity:

CALLED IT: While many pollsters underestimated Trump's support in Nov, a few key polls called the race correctly.@Scarlett__Mag, director of @JLPartnersPolls, joined the show today to break down their bold prediction of a Trump popular vote win. 🎧🔽:https://t.co/BjCMWLvBP1
— The Guy Benson Show (@GuyBensonShow) December 11, 2024

On the broader subject of polling, I'll leave you with this:

Trump never got a polling honeymoon after winning in 2016. He's got one now. CNN shows a majority approving of his presidential transition & substantial majorities have 'a lot' or 'some' confidence in his approach to an array of subjects, esp on issues that fueled his win: pic.twitter.com/RKSQiwJub2
— Guy Benson (@guypbenson) December 11, 2024

The latest CNN poll shows that Americans have overwhelming confidence in President Trump to solve America's problems — and more confidence in America's future than they've had in years!

Big things are going to happen come January 20th. pic.twitter.com/1X3wlQKRST
— Trump War Room (@TrumpWarRoom) December 11, 2024