I’m going to defend the indefensible and attempt to explain the inexplicable. I’m unwilling to throw up my hands and blame statistics or incompetence for the failure of polls to foresee Rep. Eric Cantor’s primary defeat.
Start, in Holmesian fashion, by eliminating the impossible. Those with a middle-school-level knowledge of statistics explain that one in 20 polls is just “wrong.” Never mind the origin of this foolish calculation; the simple fact is that the chances a poll would show Cantor (R-Va.) garnering 62 percent of the vote while he was “really” getting 44 percent are about one in a trillion — literally. CONT.
Mark Mellman (Mellman Group), The Hill