Few political observers saw Trump winning the presidential election. Afterward, some election forecasters ate crow. One actually ate a bug. But despite the inevitable lamentations — and recriminations — about election forecasts, there has been little rigorous evaluation of their performance. So we did one. CONT. Pavel Atanasov & Regina […] Read more »
In 2016’s Game of Musical Chairs, the Music Stopped at the Wrong Time for Clinton
… A tight election outcome might be said to have “100 fathers,” all of which may or may not have been decisive. … After the election, there have been several explanations offered for Trump’s surprising victory. These include Trump’s digital campaign efforts, the Clinton campaign’s neglect of the Rust Belt […] Read more »
How Republicans got polling right in 2016
Many pundits were surprised by Donald Trump’s win, prompting the question, ‘How did the polls get this so wrong?’ Indeed, particularly at the state level, a number of public polls missed the final results by a wide margin. But polls conducted for the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) were among […] Read more »
How to recover from the polling disaster of 2016? Look beyond polls.
Planes rarely crash because one instrument fails or one gauge gives a bad reading. Rather, the right combination of things fail in tandem — a mechanical problem paired with bad weather, a backup system malfunctioning at the same time as a pilot error — leading to catastrophe. The disaster of […] Read more »
National Polling Accurately Nails Popular Vote
This was a complex election since Hillary Clinton won the popular vote and Donald Trump won the Electoral College. In terms of forecasting, being “right” means two different things, depending on whether you were estimating the former or the latter. … In terms of predicting the national popular vote outcome, […] Read more »
Trump Won Despite Being Unpopular, So Can He Govern That Way?
President-elect Donald Trump was the least-liked major-party presidential nominee since at least 1980. He won the Electoral College even though most Americans held an unfavorable view of him — the first time that’s happened since pollsters first began consistently asking the favorable/unfavorable question. That raises a reasonable set of questions: […] Read more »