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. [...]
“Can You Trust Trump’s Approval Rating Polls?”
Nope.
That was easy.
Is that a trick question?
Nate Silver, Nate Silver???? This guy should be tarred and feathered, then run out of town on a rail.
Bleep NO!
What a joke. “HILLARY IS WINNING!!!”
I notice cherry picking Gallup who totally bowed out of political polling some time ago, while ignoring more positive Trump numbers reported by both Rassmussen and Rueters in the mid 5O percent range.
Just like election polls mean crap. because they are fake news. Sorry Coumo, your a fake journalist.
I really don’t care. It would be nice to have a POTUS that goes against rioters and other trashy behavior.
Many of us here said that the polls looked just like in Brexit where they were also outside the conceivable margin of error. Then it happened - but its good Silver is finally figuring out what many of us here knew and stated before the election -way before.
#fakepolls pushed by #fakenews. The dems and their media lapdogs have used polls as a form of psychological warfare for decades to suppress republican turnout, and it has worked amazingly well. They thought for sure it would work this time as well, but it didn’t. Now, they are pushing the #fakepolls again, this time about job approval.
Nice try, Nate.
No, I take that back. Not even a nice try.
For what offense, exactly?
No.
Nice try, He’s actually attempting to brag that they had Pres. Trump’s chance to win at 29% on Election Day.
According to Nate Silver, Hillary should have won last Nov.
Now it’s everyone else’s fault he was wrong.
Are you one of his fans?
Nate Silver BLAMING the media?!
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.....oh, man....Trump said we would get tired of winning, but I am not even CLOSE yet.
“He’s actually attempting to brag”
Wrong.
Are you someone who cannot answer a simple question?
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