In this Sept. 8, 2020 photo, voting booths are kept socially distant at the Chesterfield, N.H. polling site. A majority of President Donald Trump’s supporters plan to cast their ballot on Election Day, while about half of Joe Biden’s backers plan to vote by mail. That's according to a new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research that finds 54% of voters say they will vote before polls open on Nov. 3. (Kristopher Radder/The Brattleboro Reformer via AP)
In this Sept. 8, 2020 photo, voting booths are kept socially distant at the Chesterfield, N.H. polling site. A majority of President Donald Trump’s supporters plan to cast their ballot on Election Day, while about half of Joe Biden’s backers plan to vote by mail. That's according to a new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research that finds 54% of voters say they will vote before polls open on Nov. 3. (Kristopher Radder/The Brattleboro Reformer via AP) Credit: Kristopher Radder

It appears the biggest loser in the 2020 elections may be the polling industry.

For a second straight presidential election, President Donald Trump outperformed many of the public opinion surveys.

And this time around, it wasn’t just local polls in some of the crucial battleground states that were off the mark. So were many of the national popular vote surveys.

The night before the election, an average of the national polls compiled by Real Clear Politics showed Biden with a 7.2 point lead over Trump. With vote totals still trickling in Friday, Biden was up 2.7 points, a difference of more than 4 points.

But in New Hampshire, the surveys from some of the top pollsters were pretty close to the mark.

The final pre-election polls from the Saint Anselm College Survey Center and the University of New Hampshire Survey Center both indicated Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden leading the president by 8 points. The former vice president ended up defeating Trump in the Granite State by 7 points.

Four years ago, the UNH Survey Center showed Democrat Hillary Clinton leading Trump here by 10 percentage points, which turned out to be far off the mark. On election day, the candidates were neck-and-neck and Clinton wound up winning by less than one-half of one percentage point.

Starting in June, the UNH poll switched from traditional live operator questionnaires to on-line surveys. UNH Survey Center Director Andrew Smith told the Monitor that the move was helpful in capturing the response of Trump supporters.

“It is interesting to me that the surveys that were most accurate did not use telephones. Perhaps that made it easier for the shy Trump supporter to talk,” he noted.

In the state’s U.S. Senate election, the final Saint Anselm poll put Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen up 15 points over Republican challenger Bryant “Corky” Messner. The UNH survey indicated Shaheen up by 11 points.

The senator ended up winning a third term representing New Hampshire in the Senate by a whopping 16 points.

The final Saint Anselm and UNH surveys pointed to Republican Gov. Chris Sununu being miles ahead of his Democratic challenger, state Senate majority leader Dan Feltes. The Saint Anselm poll put Sununu up a whopping 25 points – with UNH showing a 24 point margin.

Sununu outperformed even those high expectations, crushing Feltes by 32 points to win a third term in the Corner Office.

In the state’s 1st Congressional District, the Saint Anselm poll was spot on, predicting Democratic Rep. Chris Pappas’s 5 point victory over victory over Republican challenger Matt Mowers. The final UNH survey put Mowers up by 2 points.

But in the 2nd Congressional District, the UNH survey hit the mark, predicting Democratic Rep. Annie Kuster’s 10 point defeat of GOP nominee Steve Negron. The Saint Anselm poll indicated Kuster up by 15 points ahead of Election Day.

The final Suffolk University polls for the Boston Globe indicated Biden up by 10 points over Trump, Shaheen leading Messner by 15 points, and Sununu 24 points up on Feltes.

David Paleologos – director of the Boston-based Suffolk University Political Research Center – has conducted surveys in New Hampshire for years. He told the Monitor that local experience helps keep the surveys close to the mark.

“You’ve got pollsters and researchers who know the terrain and who aren’t producing 10 polls a week in mass production risking accuracy,” Paleologos said. “Those of us that poll New Hampshire are more mindful of not only the demographics but also the shifts in attitudes in New Hampshire and the results speak for themselves.”

Count them again

The election is over – but not the recounts.

Democrat Executive Council incumbent Debora Pignatelli is asking for a recount in her election against former GOP executive councilor David Wheeler. Pignatelli is currently down by 1,527 votes to Wheeler out of nearly 150,000 votes cast in the Nashua-anchored district.

Republicans won back control the state Senate in Tuesday’s elections, flipping a 14-10 Democratic-controlled chamber to a 14-10 GOP majority. But three Democratic Senate incumbents who narrowly lost – Jeanne Dietsch of Peterborough, Shannon Chandley of Amherst and Melanie Levesque of Brookline – have requested recounts.

Dietsch lost to Republican Denise Ricciardi by 412 votes in District 9. Chandley lost to former GOP Sen. Gary Daniels by 198 votes in District 11. And Levesque lost to former Republican Sen. Kevin Avard by 830 votes in District 12.

If all three recounts resulted in the incumbents winning, the Democrats would keep control of the chamber.