Can We Trust the Polls?

In 2016, the public — particularly Democrats — felt utterly let down by pollsters and election forecasters like Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight. But Silver stood by his model, saying that disappointment was a result of an overly-optimistic reading of his forecast, which had given Trump a 30-percent chance of winning. But that doesn’t mean that Silver is doing everything the same fours years on. This week, Bob asks Silver how his model has been adjusted to account for the pandemic and election-disrupting scenarios outside the model’s scope, and how FiveThirtyEight have changed their forecast’s presentation to give readers a better grasp on probability.

On the Media


The OPINION TODAY email newsletter is a concise daily rundown of significant new poll results and insightful analysis. It’s FREE. Sign up here: opiniontoday.substack

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.