The Pollster Who Predicted Trump Thinks Geert Wilders Could Win Too

One of the only polls to predict Donald Trump’s victory caught even its creator by surprise. Arie Kapteyn, an economist at USC, ran the USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times Presidential Election Daybreak Poll, which consistently said Trump would become president of the United States, even when most other polls did not. (He did.) It also predicted Trump would win the popular vote. (He didn’t.)

So, a wash? A footnote in the troubled history of polling? Perhaps. Except Kapteyn is taking his methodology global, to the elections in the Netherlands on Wednesday. And his poll there shows the party of Geert Wilders—a right-wing populist who has called for an end to Muslim immigration and the closure of all mosques (familiar!)—with a slightly better chance to claim more seats than other parties in parliament than an average of all national polls says. If Kapteyn’s right, even a thin margin of seats could mean victory for the populists and momentum for far-right parties in Europe.

A string of high-profile polling blunders—from state polls in the US election to the FARC referendum in Columbia—have underestimated populism around the world. Is Kapteyn about to be right(ish) again? Even he isn’t sure.