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They had a Hillary win at 66% which should at least mean a tight race. Trump won handily by 77 EC votes. They were way off.
Believe the polls if you want, but I've learned better.
It was my understanding that the vast majority of the polls were predicting the popular vote as modeling the electoral vote is substantialy more complex. If I am correct on this, then the result was actually in line with the predictions. That said, this is the reason the polls are represented as a statistical chance and not a concrete statement. And the margins of victory in the flipped states were close meaning it was actually a very tight race... if a candidate carried every single state but only by one vote in each state is that a close race or a landslide? They would have a electoral vote ratio of infinity but only won by 50 votes. Margins matter.
Last edited by zzzSnorlax; 03-03-2017 at 12:37 PM..
It was my understanding that the vast majority of the polls were predicting the popular vote as modeling the electoral vote is substantialy more complex. If I am correct on this, then the result was actually in line with the predictions. That said, this is the reason the polls are represented as a statistical chance and not a concrete statement. And the margins of victory in the flipped states were close meaning it was actually a very tight race... if a candidate carried every single state but only by one vote in each state is that a close race or a landslide? Margins matter.
In other words, they were right on some stuff (national popular vote), but were off on other things (state polling - which in a winner take all election is a big deal...a few tight state races swinging towards Trump gives the impression of a larger victory when in reality these wins were based on small margins).
Compound all of this with the fact that these predictions always had probabilities attached to them (meaning that Trump was not shown to have "no chance"), and it's perplexing to me that people want to use this as evidence against all polling.
You should be skeptical of everything, and should source information from many sources. If a prediction is wrong try to understand why. Dig into the weeds and look at the data to see where it went wrong (see above).
But skepticism is not the same thing as outward denial. You shouldn't throw out the baby with the bathwater.
If a doctor gets a diagnosis wrong, that doesn't invalidate medicine...or if a weatherman gets a weather prediction wrong, that doesn't invalidate meteorology...same applies here.
LOL. It was 55 last week. And its legendary for its methodology providing excessively high republican results. This is horrific for this poll.
Yeah, a positive rating of 52% for a republican on Rasmussen, is the equivalent of about 37% on a legitimate poll. Since it's almost 4 years from the next election, the model of "likely voters" has little relevance. In that period of time, a large percentage of those who voted for Trump, will have continued to regress into full senility and need to be spoon-fed.
Last edited by Steve McDonald; 03-03-2017 at 01:09 PM..
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