I’m reading a slew of very similar postmortems for the polling business, in which I’ve worked my entire career. The story goes something like this: After a major miss in 2016, the industry just got 2020 just as wrong. Many say polls patently failed to find hidden or reluctant Trump […] Read more »
It’s not you, Nate. It’s us. (And maybe a little you.)
It may be time to break up with the Nates. They promised they’d changed. They promised they wouldn’t hurt us anymore. Or were they causing us to hurt ourselves? Either way, polling gurus Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight and Nate Cohn of the New York Times keep producing data sets that […] Read more »
Polls underestimated Trump’s support, but not by as much as you might think
As returns from quick-counting states like Florida and Texas flowed in Tuesday night, pollsters quickly became targets in America’s easily triggered political culture. With Democratic challenger Joe Biden running well behind poll-created expectations in those states, accusations of “collapse” and “disaster” peppered the nation’s pollsters. President Trump added to the […] Read more »
‘Guesses upon guesses’: Polls fall short again in 2020, raising red flags for future contests
… The underestimation of Trump’s turnout and support in many places, after similar issues in 2016, has raised again questions about the reliance of campaigns, the press and the public on surveys to shape the race. That in turn has prompted new questioning of the bedrock principle among political strategists […] Read more »
Were 2020 election polls wrong? FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver explains how to interpret polling
… The disparity between state polling before the election and the election returns has once again raised questions about whether polls delivered an accurate preview of actual voting — and whether there’s a fundamental shortcoming with polling itself. FiveThirtyEight editor-in-chief Nate Silver said what his team does is provide “likely […] Read more »
Poll Hub: Post-Election Analysis
On this week’s episode of Poll Hub, Election Day has turned into Election Week. We assess where the count stands and tackle the criticism about this year’s pre-election polls. Is the criticism warranted, or is it too soon to judge? We have our take. Marist Poll Read more »