A task force of polling experts found surveys notably understated support for Donald Trump, both nationally and at the state level. Here’s what may have gone wrong, according to a polling historian.
All predictions, whether scientific or political, include uncertainty.
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Whether you are predicting the outcome of an election or studying how effective a new drug is, there will always be some uncertainty. A margin of error is how statisticians measure that uncertainty.
People have information on how they’ll vote, but also about how others in their community may vote.
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People know a lot about their friends and neighbors – and pollsters can learn from that information, if they ask.
Will Trump voters – like these at a rally, waving goodbye to him as he leaves – defy the polls and send him back to the White House?
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Polling shows Joe Biden with a large lead over Donald Trump nationally in the presidential race. But there are many ways that presidential race polling has gone wrong in the past, and could do so now.
Senator Chuck Schumer holds up the White House transcript of a call between President Donald Trump and the president of Ukraine.
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Approval ratings are usually a good way to predict the winner of the next presidential election. But Trump’s numbers fall far outside any historical trends.
Better opinions polls are more expensive because pollsters need to spend more effort getting a representative and honest sample of voters.
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You could compare election opinion polls to penalty shoot-outs at a World Cup final: there’s huge pressure to get it right and we remember the big misses most of all.
Contrary to expectations, Victoria failed to deliver a government majority to Labor.
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Emily Kazyak, University of Nebraska-Lincoln and Kelsy Burke, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
More than 1,000 Nebraskans were asked about laws that protect business owners who refuse to serve gays or lesbians. People on either side of the issue made appeals to rights, freedom and capitalism.
Given the failure of British polls to predict the outcome of Brexit, is it possible Donald Trump could produce a surprise result of even greater proportions?
The nation’s political chasm – already wide – has grown even more since 2012.
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Elected officials and the media are in cahoots. Both have succumbed to a two-party system that treats voters not as independent thinkers, but as blind partisans.
Senior Lecturer in Political Science: Research Fellow at the Cairns Institute; Research Associate for Centre for Policy Futures, University of Queensland, James Cook University