Frank Luntz, a pollster who worked with Republicans for years, grovelingly attempted to explain to a CNN panel of leftists on Monday his disastrous midterm predictions, where he got the numbers incredibly wrong, predicting that the GOP would take the House and the Senate.

(Video Credit: CNN)

“When the dust settles from the 2022 midterms, the GOP will have between 233-240 House seats – outdoing their total from 1994. Republicans also will take control of the Senate, but that won’t be clear until Friday,” he predicted a day before the midterm elections.

As he appeared on CNN, Luntz was asked to justify why he allegedly whiffed on the numbers. He attempted to appear non-partisan in his predictions, noting that he got his information from both the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and the Republican Congressional Campaign Committee. But Luntz is not exactly what many would consider conservative or unbiased.

“How did so many people, including you, get it so wrong? And, as I said in the beginning there, we tend to over-index, we’ve been doing it since 2016, over-indexing the MAGA part of the electorate,” co-host Don Lemon combatively asked Luntz.

“There is a fear they did not include enough Republicans in their samples. Because we knew from 2016, 2018, and even 2020, that Trump voters tended not to respond to pollsters because they thought that the results would be used against them. So there is an effort to, as you say, over-index, this time. that’s number one,” he responded. “Number two is that people came to the polls and they finally decided enough is enough. About 8-9 percent of the public changes, they come in undecided and they have to decide at that moment. And they come in potentially wanting to vote one way and they end up voting the other.”

I am getting (deservingly) roasted for this pre-election prediction.

So, I must ask: Who got it right with their prediction❓

Link them in the replies – I try not to live in an echo chamber. https://t.co/7HG6ApngFd

— Frank Luntz (@FrankLuntz) November 12, 2022

Lemon demanded clarification on the reply, “Woah oh oh, wait. What do you mean?”

“Where they come in and think I’m going to vote Republican. And they go and have to decide, do they pull the ballots, or do they want to make a statement voting Democrat? Eight percent of the population comes in and may change their minds. And third is that the independents, and this is where the Republicans have to take a very close analysis to, the independents usually break 55/45 Republican. If they break 60/40, Republicans win. In this case, they broke 50/50. That’s a real problem for the GOP. It’s a major drop,” Luntz told Lemon.

“And one more, Republicans got 5 million more votes for the House than the Democrats. Five million. So why don’t the results show themselves in the congressional races? The answer, redistricting. That had a bigger impact against the GOP than anybody realized and you could not know this until Election Day,” he asserted.

After this, no one believes any poll anymore. We’re done.

— Common Sense (@nevrcomplicated) November 13, 2022

Co-host Kaitlan Collins then took her turn, grilling Luntz about polling and whether it can be fixed or not.

“You don’t,” Lunz flatly told her.

“The polling is irrelevant is what you’re saying,” she shot back, which is not what Luntz said at all. What he intimated is that polling is only as good as the information that is provided to pollsters.

You also walked into our yahoo offices on the night of the 2016 election and told us Hillary was winning in a landslide, so…grain of salt.

— Tony Maciulis (@TonyMaciulis) November 8, 2022

“You guys spend too much time focused on who’s going to win and lose and trying to predict that,” Luntz charged.

“Isn’t that what you do?” Lemon said, attacking him. “You’re a pollster!”

“I don’t do that. I don’t do that. I haven’t worked in a political campaign in more than a decade. I used the numbers that were given to me by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and the Republican Congressional Campaign Committee. And no matter what they say…” he attempted to respond before being cut off.

“Frank, how can you say that?” Lemon chided referring to Luntz’s tweet.

The "red wave" hosts and commentators are downplaying their pre-election proclamations today and their reliance on pollsters.  They are part of the problem but clearly have learned nothing.

— Mark R. Levin (@marklevinshow) November 9, 2022

Collins went on to ask Luntz once again about polling being irrelevant. He told her that the media should “stop focusing on who’s up and down, and start trying to understand why.”

“Give us insight. Give us information that we can use. People watch this show because they’re more informed by giving you their 10 or 15 or 30 minutes. They watch because they care about what’s going on and they want to stay up to date on all the events that are important. They’re not asking you to predict the future. They want to fully and completely understand the present. So let’s go back to using polling for what it was meant to do. Insight, information, knowledge, and, if you’re lucky, wisdom,” Luntz asserted.

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