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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsWere polls way off in 2016?
By Dan Balz
May 4 at 1:00 PM
... A new report examining what happened comes to a split conclusion: National surveys were generally accurate in projecting the popular vote but state polls had a historically bad year in forecasting the results in the electoral college.
... Trump won .. by rolling up 306 electoral votes to .. Clintons 232. But Clinton won the popular vote by almost 3 million votes and a margin of 2.1 percentage points ... the second time in .. five elections .. a Democrat won the popular vote and a Republican won the electoral college ...
... The AAPOR committee concludes that the national polls were generally correct and accurate by historical standards, and that they were more accurate than in 2012. The polls, on average, pointed to a Clinton victory in the popular vote by about three percentage points. Her eventual advantage was well within the margin of error of the national polls.
But where elections are decided, in state-by-state contests, things were not so rosy for pollsters. State polls were historically bad the report calls it the largest error in state polling of elections starting in 2000 and the key failure was the underestimation of Trumps support. This was particularly true in the Upper Midwest, where the election was decided ...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/were-the-polls-way-off-in-2016-a-new-report-offers-a-mixed-answer/2017/05/04/a80440a0-30d6-11e7-9534-00e4656c22aa_story.html
JI7
(89,264 posts)LenaBaby61
(6,977 posts)Wasn't too difficult for the polls to be off, especially when you had a set of insane circumstances IE: ruskie meddling, sexism, misogyny, racism, voter suppression, voter-crosschecking, voter purging etc. done to Dems by thuglicans in certain states, and cherry on top: Interference by FBI head James "'Mildly Nauseous" Comey, who chimed in 11 days before November 8th with bogus news about Hillary Clinton's emails, meanwhile, sitting on scandalous and horrible information that he and other intelligence agencies were (And still ARE) investigating tRumputn/ruskie collaboration/ties.
Yep, not difficult for pollsters to have gotten some things about that tainted 2016 GE wrong.
democratisphere
(17,235 posts)THIS would have placed her in the oval office of the WH. Our ass backward electoral college skewing of THIS election allowed an insane idiot to take HRC's rightful position instead. The polls had it right, the f*cked up election system got it wrong.
dchill
(38,532 posts)llmart
(15,552 posts)It's just so much easier for them to use this an an excuse not to further investigate the real reasons we have an imbecile in the White House. That might be too much trouble for them.
joshdawg
(2,651 posts)We lost and we already know why and how. Why belabor the point?
2018 is around the corner and that is what our focus should be on.
We need to regain the House and the Senate.
Impeachment for the dog crap in the W.H. is viable, but will it happen? With a republican controlled Congress?
Personally, I would not vote for another republican ever! None has my best interests in mind.
Maybe I'm one of those yellow dog Democrats. Maybe.
I do know I am a Liberal AND Progressive.
Ok, I'm off my soap box.
planetc
(7,833 posts)Or, DID we lose? Did we actually lose, or did more people vote for Clinton & Kaine in swing electoral college states than Trump and Pence? If they did, and the election was stolen after voters cast a vote, then the problem we face is different from "Why did all those nuts vote for Trump?" If Democrats actually won, then the question is "How do we assure the safety of our elections?"
And if the answer to the first question is NO, we didn't lose, then it will do us little good to tinker with our message or find more and more exciting candidates, because with the best candidates and the most powerful message, we will still "lose" in 2018.
If we actually won, the problem is to secure the accuracy of our elections, which is a big enough problem. If we actually lost the election, then we have to find a way to communicate with all those sincere Trump voters. Sincere, but woefully misguided.
So, I don't see how we can decide on our strategy until we know what the problem actually is.
joshdawg
(2,651 posts)a lunatic republican is in the White House.
I get what you are saying, but again, why belabor the point that republicans won and Democrats lost.........again.
The point of my post was to ensure we have viable candidates with the right message. That is our focus. Regaining the House and the Senate. It can happen.
Have a good day.
planetc
(7,833 posts)There is no evidence of votes being switched.
planetc
(7,833 posts)I don't think you're interested in the highly suggestive evidence that votes were switched, erased, or simply hacked. Evidence that started coming in in 2000. Your mind is made up.
sharedvalues
(6,916 posts)Some speculation that the social media manipulation 45's campaign did (and Russia did) told people to lie to pollsters. So the right lied to pollsters. And the left got a little complacent, which may have been intended.
colsohlibgal
(5,275 posts)2000 and 2004 as well. Our election procedures are a joke, scattershot and ripe for hanky panky. Then there is the Electoral College....which gives way too much weight to voters in sparsely populated republican stronghold states when you calculate votes per population.
DemocratSinceBirth
(99,711 posts)Miracles happen. Black swan events happen. Trump hasn't repealed the laws of probability.
Bernardo de La Paz
(49,040 posts)Damn the instant gratification need for counting that leads to vote machines in the first place.
If the machine is compromised -- the Republicon companies selling them have no accountability or transparency -- then it can just jigger the vote results for that machine by 10% in favor of Republicons.
If the computers used to read from the machines are hacked then they can jigger the results after reading them.
Needs to be a lot more auditing and transparency.
Remember: about a 40,000 vote swing (about 80,000 vote margin) would have won Clinton the Electoral College in addition to her winning the Popular Vote.
yallerdawg
(16,104 posts)karynnj
(59,504 posts)While there may be some who decided based on Comey, they could also have been conservatives, republicans etc who reluctantly cast a vote based on the Supreme Court/ right wing policies, who still did not like or respect Trump. The exit polls showed that those who did not like EITHER candidate, mostly voted for Trump. I suspect this is because by the time of the election, very very few Democrats had not aligned with Clinton - leaving the remainder mostly right leaning.
I do not think any of the exit polls bothered to ask an open ended question to the late deciders as to WHY they made that choice.
What I also don't know is whether any of the pollsters have gone back and analyzed their data on regular opinion polls to compare JUST FOR THE GROUP WHO SAID UNFAVORABLE TO BOTH, how they answered the head to head question. I never saw this breakout - even when I looked at all the crosstabs posted -- and I really really wanted to see it, so I did look. Throughout the entire general election, both the favorable/unfavorable and the head to head race questions were asked for many samples. As BOTH candidates had unfavorables above 50%, there were people who disliked both.
I assume that the numbers of people disliking both are small in all the studies, but I would love it if a statistician compiled a list that showed the number fitting this category and how they answered the head to head question on each study with both AND the study's overall for each candidate- sorted by time. The raw data has this -- and it could tell much about what happened. One possibility is that all or most of the Democrats "came home" long before the election. This would not be a surprise as, among Democrats and the left, even those who would not have picked Clinton over all possible choices circa 2015 would have easily picked her over Trump. This was NOT true on the other side. there were prominent republicans who said they could not vote for Trump.
yallerdawg
(16,104 posts)At time of this poll, Hillary had a 4% lead.
94% Yes, heard
6% Not heard
10. Has this recent news changed your mind about who you will vote for in the presidential election, or has it not really changed your vote choice?
4% Changed mind about vote
89% Not really changed vote choice
1% (VOL) Don't know
6% Not heard
4% changed their mind. Another 7% hadn't heard or were thinking about it.
Trump 48.8% vs Clinton 47.6%. 1.2% difference.
https://www.monmouth.edu/polling-institute/reports/MonmouthPoll_PA_110216/
karynnj
(59,504 posts)StevieM
(10,500 posts)StevieM
(10,500 posts)And not for the first time, either.