Posted on 02/12/2017 1:25:32 PM PST by NobleFree
[...] Here’s the thing. The loss of trust mostly isn’t the pollsters’ fault. It’s the media’s fault. Oh, yes, I’m going there. The loss of trust in polls was enabled, in large part, by reporting and analysis that incorrectly portrayed the polls as showing an almost-certain Clinton win when in fact they showed a close and highly uncertain Electoral College race , especially after FBI Director James B. Comey’s letter to Congress on Oct. 28 .
As my colleague Harry Enten put it a few days before the election , Trump was only a normal-size polling error away from winning. Clinton would win if the polls were spot on — and she’d win in a borderline landslide in the event of an error in her favor. But the third possibility — if the polls underestimated Trump, even slightly — would probably be enough for Trump to win the Electoral College . (That’s why FiveThirtyEight’s forecast during the final week of the campaign showed Trump with roughly a 1-in-3 chance of winning the Electoral College, dipping slightly to 29 percent on Election Day itself.)
That third possibility is pretty much exactly what happened. Trump beat the final FiveThirtyEight national polling average by only 1.8 percentage points. Meanwhile, he beat the final FiveThirtyEight polling average in the average swing state — weighted by its likelihood of being the tipping-point state — by 2.7 percentage points. (The miss was larger than that in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, but Clinton met or slightly exceeded her polls in several other swing states.) This was nothing at all out of the ordinary. The polls were about as accurate as they’d been, on average, in presidential elections since 1968 . They were somewhat more accurate than they’d been in the most recent federal election, the 2014 midterms . But they were enough to tip the election to Trump because Clinton had been in a precarious position to begin with. [...]
The stupid idiots who do these polls just don’t get it..NO ONE BUYS THEIR CRAP ANYMORE..they had Clinton winning 400+ electoral votes, they had the Atlanta Falcons with a 90+ percent chance of winning the Super Bowl and both times these bogus polls were wrong..because the polls are 100 percent garbage
A Yuge participation trophy though.
As much as I trusted the exit polls in November and all the polls leading up to the election. Fake Polls Fake News.
Some want to learn, others want to fling feces.
When the polls were so far off on the election then how can one trust any poll at all ever again?
No, but I can sure as hell ignore them!
“the polls were so far off on the election”
They weren’t - read the excerpt.
That's the tricky thing about people who collect statistics. Everyone comes after them when their numbers led to an incorrect conclusion.
I trust they are about as accurate as they were before the election and during Reagan’s time...
Same old trick. Nate cites to the polls from just before the election. You know, the one’s the media puts out to try and salabage its credibility. He ignores the one’s that appeared for months and months before showing Trump had no chance.
If I was asked a simple question maybe, maybe not. Ask the question.
Hillary never had a lead, never had a chance of winning.
The American people don’t like her, period.
Any of the GOP candidates had the ability to beat her, unless they went “full fetal”, which was a strong possibility.
The bottom line, is that if Marco Rubio, or Jeb were POTUS right now, the Libs would still be pissed, because they’d view any GOP victory on the heals of Obama leaving office, as a repudiation of him.
Normally, the same party doesn’t win 3 POTUS elections in a row. But after the 1st Black POTUS served 2 terms, the Libs think that the American people owe it to Obama and all Blacks to put one more Dem in the WH right after him, or else it would be racist.
NO
NOTHIHNG, nothing ever again from the Fiction Press.....
Hell no.
Certainly you can trust the polls. After many months of lying, the pollsters have repented and are now telling the truth. They have now joined the ranks of illegals as being a class that is sinless, and true hearted, and can only commit acts of love.
Nate Silver’s polling is tarnished.
President Trump supporters are in danger of shaming and thuggery every bit as much as candidate Trump supporters were. We just keep our mouths shut and keep on winning by supporting out guys.
As much as I trust a used car salesman.
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