Posted on 11/09/2016 10:52:15 AM PST by 11th_VA
Well, what can we say — we blew it.
We thought the signs pointed to Hillary Clinton winning the White House. We thought that even if she lost Florida, North Carolina, and Ohio, her Midwestern “firewall” of states that not only had voted for Barack Obama twice, but hadn’t voted for a Republican since the 1980s, would hold for her. It didn’t — Trump blew a hole in what we dubbed “Fortress Obama.” Remarkably, this all happened while Clinton was winning Virginia by a larger margin than Obama did in 2012 and almost certainly winning the national popular vote.
Every two years, we put out an update after the election asking, “How did we do?” Well, let’s see:
President Do we really have to get into it? OK, fine.
We wrongly insisted for months that Clinton was always leading the race and never put her below 270 electoral votes. As of this writing, Trump won 279 electoral votes to Clinton’s 228, according to NBC News projections. We missed the following Leans Democratic states: Florida, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania. We had Wisconsin as Likely Democratic, yet Trump also carried it. Two other Leans Democratic states — Michigan (where Trump leads) and New Hampshire (where Clinton leads) — remain uncalled, as well as Arizona, where Trump leads and we rated as Leans Republican.
Senate Our big miss was Sen. Ron Johnson’s (R) reelection in Wisconsin (we had him as an underdog for more than a year). Additionally, we did not pick Sens. Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) and Pat Toomey (R-PA) to hold on — Toomey won a close race and Ayotte is narrowly trailing and may be headed to a recount in New Hampshire with Gov. Maggie Hassan (D). We picked a 50-50 Senate; it will be 52-48 or 53-47 Republican. We picked the other 31 races correctly with New Hampshire outstanding.
Governors Remarkably, Trump rolled in West Virginia and Clinton dominated Vermont, yet both states elected governors from the other party, as predicted here. We missed Indiana’s open seat race, where Lt. Gov. Eric Holcomb (R) will replace Vice President-elect Mike Pence (R), as well as New Hampshire’s open-seat contest, where Executive Councilor Chris Sununu (R) narrowly defeated fellow Executive Councilor Colin Van Ostern (D). Overall, we got nine of 11 right, with one remaining uncalled race in North Carolina — we picked state Attorney General Roy Cooper (D), who is slightly ahead.
House Given the size of the Republican victory nationally, we overshot on a Democratic gain of 13 seats. Currently Democrats have netted six seats, according to Politico , and several races remain uncalled in California, where votes will trickle in over the next several weeks. We’ll update the final tally in the coming weeks.
***
We heard for months from many of you, saying that we were underestimating the size of a potential hidden Trump vote and his ability to win. We didn’t believe it, and we were wrong. The Crystal Ball is shattered. We’ll pick up the pieces starting next week as we try to unpack what happened in this election, where there was so much dramatic change from just four years ago.
We have a lot to learn, and we must make sure the Crystal Ball never has another year like this. This team expects more of itself, and we apologize to our readers for our errors.
I remember my Latin:
Mea Idiot.
Mea Stupid.
Mea Jerk.
WoW.
Actually saying they screwed up. Good for them.
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.
Your lying will recommence immediately. Go away Rasmussen.
I absolutely detest Larry Sabotage (Sabato), but I have to say that he was eating humble pie big time this morning and said he didn’t have just egg on his face, but an omelet. He said his students will all want better grades because he got an “F” last night. I thoroughly enjoyed his interview on FOX. :-)
As Conservative Treehouse notes, the polls were lies on top of lies, all topped off by the Big Lie ie the RCP Average.
Averaging flawed numbers yields a bigger flawed number.
Instead, polls as a weapon of manipulation and fear must be resisted, ignored and mocked. Refusing to participate in polls should be as automatic as refusal to respond to spam email or telephone sales.
Polls are first and foremost a business: the raw materials are cheap - robodialers, minimum-wage operators - and the products are expensive since rich media companies and deep-pocketed candidates will pay handsomely for what they believe to be the Oracle Of Truth.
Cut off their supply and let them wither and die.
They might begin by 1) moving all their samples closer to 50/50 D/R, and 2) ask a few more white people what they think.
Add Political Science to the list of oxymoron’s.
That would be a start. It will be interesting to see what the 2016 D/R/I turns out to be.
I’d call it more of a “shy” Trump vote phenomenon rather a “monster” vote one. But nonetheless, no big time pollster picked it up. There were a couple that had Trump up 1-2 in the popular vote at the end, but even they are going to be wrong because Clinton will likely win the popular vote. If Trump had won the popular vote by 1-2, he may have taken a couple more states.
They didn’t screw up.
DON’T BUY THAT NONSENSE.
They knew the real story.
They were willing to fall on their own swords in hopes they would bring Hillary to the WH.
Yeah, the only thing that they “blew” was not having figured out how to cover their complicit tracks better, when they shill for the ‘rats.
“We’ll pick up the pieces starting next week as we try to unpack what happened in this election”
Don’t bother. Let me tell you about the lessons I have learned from the last couple of election cycles: Pollsters opinions only matter to other pollsters and talking heads. I have learned to turn the channel when you come on to tell me how America thinks. No one in my circle of friends paid attention to you and we will not pay attention to you in the future.
They weren’t “wrong”, they were “lying”.
Seems they were thinking that the Obama demographics represented a permanent shift, but that premise has been blown to smithereens. It was an aberration.
I wonder if Clinton believed the pools and toned down her fake vote generation efforts. After all, if you are going to win anyway, why engage in more crimes than necessary and get yourself caught.
Then, when she saw the truth and pivoted back to the Midwest, it was too late to fully engage her minions.
The popular vote overage for Clinton is almost all in CA and NY, so it wouldn’t have affected the electoral count. And I think a good percentage of it comes from fake and illegal votes, anyway. His number one job after he is sworn in is to go after organized Democrat vote fraud, everywhere it can be found.
Sabato allowed himself to be lured into making the silly assumption that the Obama elections amounted to a genuine realignment.
The Obama phenomenon was a sort of Black Swan, no pun intended. It was a one-off (or maybe that would be two-off, more accurately).
People voted for Obama for differing reasons, but for the majority who pulled the lever for him, it was due to their naive belief that doing so made them virtuous by proving they weren't racist.
Now the country is "over that." Majority-America has proved it wasn't racist by voting in the unqualified fraud, once known as Barry Soetoro, simply because he qualified as a black person.
I don't believe this phenomenon will ever be repeated again. Oh, the Dems will try with another Obama-style savior, e.g. Corey Booker (a completely worthless pol). It won't work.
Well, you could have started by basing your polling on the real world, instead of a D +9 turnout model.
You might have also opened your eyes wide enough to notice the huge enthusiasm gap that showed itself in rally attendance, small campaign donations, Twitter traffic, etc.
Lastly, and most importantly, you could have swept your personal bias aside (like Professor Norpoth did), which would have helped you to apply the aforementioned indicators to your results.
But no, you’re a googly eyed liberal who rejects inconsequential elements like facts, logic, and reason.
Grow up, Sabato.
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