‘I Don’t Have a Happy Ending’: A Pollster on What Went Wrong

Over the past few days, there’s been much consternation over this year’s polling of the presidential race. How did we end up with a close election in key swing states after months of surveys that suggested there could be a Democratic landslide?

It’s a familiar crisis: After the 2016 election, pollsters faced a chorus of recrimination about missing the mark and conducted a major analysis of what went wrong.

Charles Franklin, the director of Wisconsin’s best-known political survey, the Marquette University Law School Poll, helped compile that 2016 report. … I talked to Dr. Franklin about the crisis of confidence in polling, the challenge in identifying Trump supporters and why the surveys got it wrong, again. CONT.

Lisa Lerer, New York Times


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