BUFFALO, N.Y. (WBEN) - "The polling was wrong, again. This is the second cycle where polling missed it." Republican strategist Carl Calabrese commenting on what appears to be the biggest loser of the night, the polling industry.
It did not come as a surprise to Calabrese. He has been warning for weeks that he thought the presidential race was much closer than the landslide that pollsters were predicting for Joe Biden.
"Polling has got to have a fundamental reassessment of itself. At best, their models are wrong or their methodology is outdated, or at worst, it's biased," he said.
Calabrese thinks polls are agenda-driven and not science-driven. "They're going to have to deal with that, or they will be out of business."
It is the second straight presidential election where President Trump outperformed public opinion surveys.
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ABC political analyst Steve Roberts agrees with Calabrese. "They're going to have to go back and see how they got things wrong. Polls are only as good as the information you put into it. If the assumptions are wrong, results will be wrong," he said.
"Trump's organizational ability maximized the turnout of his voters. Clearly, they underestimated the intensity of the pro-Trump voters," said Roberts.
Democrat Erie County Legislator and Canisius College Political Science professor Kevin Hardwick said when the dust is settled on the race, and the mail-in ballots have been counted, a comparison will have to be made against the latest polls to try to figure out how they got it wrong.