Veteran political pollster Frank Luntz had a rough day.
“The political polling profession is done,” he told Axios just after 11 p.m. on Election Day. “It is devastating to my industry.”
Early Wednesday afternoon, Luntz tweeted an apology to Trump pollster John McLaughlin, who said in late October President Donald Trump was leading “in all swing states.”
In late October, Luntz told Fox News that, if the polling predictions about the race between Trump and Democrat Joe Biden were wrong, his “profession is done.”
He also said on Election Day: “If Trump does pull it out … it would be the complete and utter destruction of the polling industry, at least in politics.”
While the final tally in several swing states still remains unknown as of early Wednesday afternoon, many of the polls leading up to Tuesday’s election predicted a major Biden victory. That has not happened.
If the former vice president wins to Trump, he will have barely made it to the necessary 270-vote threshold in the Electoral College.
Several other political commentators condemned the polling industry:
Fox News host Tucker Carlson unloaded on the media Tuesday night.
“[W]e in the media are particularly good at pretending that there is some reason that we misled our viewers or our readers,” he said. “We really should stop doing that because too much is at stake. And the first way to fix it is by holding the people who screwed up accountable.”
“And that’s just by firing them,” he added. “And they can go do something useful, like hang drywall or learn to paint or do something else. But they cannot keep discrediting the work of the rest of us by screwing up in the way they have. I think that is a fair ask.”