It’s been one month since the Associated Press called the U.S. presidential race for Donald Trump. Most states have certified their election results, solidifying the President-Elect’s margin of victory at 1.5% over Vice President Kamala Harris.

It took a month for the numbers to get to this point though.

On November 6, Donald Trump had a 4.8 million vote lead over Vice President Kamala Harris… and everyone from pundits to the public were turning their fury on the polls.

“The problem about comparing the poll results to results on election day or the next night, is that it takes a long time to count the votes,” Berwood Yost said, the director of Franklin & Marshall Poll.

Today, Trump’s lead has shrunk to 2.3 million votes nationally.

Pennsylvania poll predictions from the last three weeks of the election compared to final results had a 1.6% average error for the presidential race. It was 2.5% for the senate race.

“Given modern polling and sampling error, that's pretty much right on the mark,” Yost said.

Polls in the Commonwealth often showed either candidate winning by just 1 or 2 points.  While margins were accurate, around 57% or the polls picked the right presidential winner. Only 26% picked the right senate winner.

“If you look at picking the right winner, because the races were so close, that was more of a coin flip,” Yost said.

Even though most polls meet accuracy standards, Yost says public frustration can stem from how political commentators spin poll results when talking about elections.

“They often have some element of a poll based forecast, right? That's not necessarily the pollsters themselves making those predictions. It’s someone else using polls to make predictions,” Yost said. "And we sometimes get blamed for that."

Election results in turn leave voters searching for answers.

“Pollsters also get sort of the the emotions that people feel about their candidates when they lose. You know, that's the first thing they want to talk about,” Yost said.

For the poll director, accuracy of polls are important— but the purpose of polling is to understand the unique dynamics impacting each election. Yost pointed out that pre- election polls cautioned that Democrats were losing some of their traditional voter bases and that the economy and Biden policies would cost them votes.

“All of those indicated Democrats were facing headwinds,” Yost said. "We captured that, we talked about it, it was true. The polling did a nice job of capturing the dynamics of the race and telling us the race would be close."