3 Comments
Nov 7Liked by Paul Mainwood

It's super interesting that accuracy isn't getting better over time. Quite counter intuitive. Do you think it ties in with the issues ONS are having getting people to respond? Volume wise the political polls get lots of people but clearly not the right mix.

Nice to think that the polls will become less prominent in the news cycle given the inaccuracies. Probably wishful thinking.

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Not sure I buy this.

For one thing, the RMS error in the battleground states is 2.8. That drops to 2.3 if you put aside Nevada, which everyone knew was going to be hard to poll, or 2.5 if you leave Nevada in but weight by Electoral College vote. The polls will probably have done a less good job of getting the popular vote, since the swing towards Trump seems to have been higher outside the battleground states, but that wasn't really what they were trying for.

For another, the swing towards Trump was fairly uniform across the swing states (EV-weighted average 3.4, EV-weighted RMS difference from average 1.6). So, sure, if there's a reasonably uniform swing towards Trump and a polling error that underrates Trump, the polls will predict 2020 better than 2024, but I don't see that says anything much about their accuracy.

I do agree that three consecutive errors in presidential years in the same direction is indicative of something.

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This is data supports the Hannity Rule: take the polling median and add 3% to the GOP nominee.

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