Even though polls had a historically accurate year in 2018 and came very close to predicting the national popular vote in the 2016 presidential contest, many Americans remain skeptical about public opinion surveys. That's largely because most people don't understand the fundamentals of statistics and how sampling a small subset can yield accurate results, political analyst Ruy Teixeira said Thursday.

"They're much more often right than wrong, they get it pretty close," Teixeira, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, said of public opinion surveys during Thursday's broadcast of Hill.TV's "What America's Thinking."

"There's this thing about 'well they didn't call me' because people don't understand about probability sampling," Teixeira added. "They don't understand the statistical theory of polling, why it actually works, but should work."

Teixeira weighed in on a new Hill-HarrisX poll, which found that a majority of registered voters do not trust opinion polls. The Hill-HarrisX poll found that Republicans and self-described conservatives were much more likely than moderates, liberals or Democrats to be skeptical about polls.

Many Americans remain broadly skeptical about polls despite public opinion surveys having a historically accurate year during the 2018 midterm elections and coming close to predicting the national popular vote in the 2016 presidential contest.

For his part, President Trump Donald John TrumpSteele Dossier sub-source was subject of FBI counterintelligence probe Pelosi slams Trump executive order on pre-existing conditions: It 'isn't worth the paper it's signed on' Trump 'no longer angry' at Romney because of Supreme Court stance MORE has repeatedly asserted that his approval rating in office is higher than most surveys have indicated and earlier this month he claimed without evidence that his approval rating would be 75 percent absent the ongoing investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller Robert (Bob) MuellerCNN's Toobin warns McCabe is in 'perilous condition' with emboldened Trump CNN anchor rips Trump over Stone while evoking Clinton-Lynch tarmac meeting The Hill's 12:30 Report: New Hampshire fallout MORE.

In the 2016 election, Trump received 46.1 percent of the popular vote.

Trump and his supporters have frequently cited inaccurate predictions about the Electoral College vote to bolster their case that opinion surveys should not be believed.

Pollsters have defended their work by saying that such electoral models were based on outdated state-level survey data.

"They're not going to get it exactly right but they're going to get it ball-parkish and that's what the theory says they should do," Teixeira said, referring to polls.

"It works kind of like it should," he added. "But for people, what they remember are the misses, what they remember are the baloney polls."

—Matthew Sheffield