About two weeks before Election Day 2016, the New York Times tweeted its most recent forecast for the outcome of the presidential election. Hillary Clinton had a 93 percent chance of winning, the forecast suggested, leaving Donald Trump a less than 1-in-10 chance of success. …
That election was certainly humbling for those who try to explain what’s happening in American politics by looking at public opinion polling. Polling still remains largely accurate, and, in fact, national polling in 2016 nailed the eventual popular vote margin. But predicting a nearly 3-million-vote win nationally isn’t very useful if you miss the 78,000 votes in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin that actually swing the electoral vote.
The Times’s Nate Cohn seems determined not to be caught off-guard again. CONT.
Philip Bump, Washington Post