The polls were wrong. And because we are obsessed with predicting opinions rather than listening to them, we didn’t see it coming. So, the world woke up believing that Republican candidate Donald Trump had a 15% chance of winning based on polling predictions – roughly the same chance of rolling […] Read more »
The USC/L.A. Times poll saw what other surveys missed: A wave of Trump support
For most of the last four months, the USC/L.A. Times Daybreak tracking poll has been the great outlier of the 2016 campaign — consistently showing a better result for Donald Trump than other surveys did. In light of Tuesday’s election returns, the poll now looks like the only major survey […] Read more »
Failed Polls in 2016 Call Into Question a Profession’s Precepts
U.S. survey companies and media organizations that collectively presaged a close Hillary Clinton victory now face an autopsy on how they got it so wrong after a year suffused by polls, aggregates of polls and even real-time projections of the vote on Election Day. While the predictions gave some observers […] Read more »
Are There Really Hidden Trump Voters?
Hillary Clinton is favored to become the next president of the United States. Yet many in Donald J. Trump’s camp remain undaunted, arguing that hidden supporters will carry him to the White House. As the polls have narrowed in the last few days, the question of whether pollsters could be […] Read more »
Polls Can Get Latino, Asian American Vote Wrong
As the Presidential Election finally approaches, experts warn that there are good polls and bad polls which can lead to the wrong information about Latino and Asian American voters. Getting it right is important in a year when registration and early voting is showing record participation among these two groups, […] Read more »
Beware the phantom swings: why dramatic bounces in the polls aren’t always what they seem
… Over the past three weeks, our election model and polling for The Economist has shown a consistent lead for Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump of three to five percent. In contrast, some other polls have shown wide swings. … We believe that most of the bounces seen in surveys this […] Read more »