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How Did They Get It So Wrong?

If you tell someone they’re deplorable, uneducated, misogynistic and garbage, just because they support a particular candidate, they’re going to end up not telling anyone they support that particular candidate.

Photo by Joshua Woroniecki / Unsplash

According to the polls, and the media, the US election was too close to call. Harris was going to win, but only just. All the swing states were 50/50. There was no way Trump was going win every swing state. 

The election was going to go down to the wire, according to Shane Te Pou, writing for the Herald

The great Sir Bob Jones was certain that Trump was going to lose:

A Kamala victory will see Trump and his mindless followers run amok. Best of all, as I've repeatedly said in this blog, it will also culminate with Trump achieving his ultimate destination, namely a prison cell. That will be a great day for the civilised world. 

Website FiveThirtyEight, which averages the data from polls, put Harris ahead of Trump by 48.2 per cent to 46.4 per cent. 

The New York Times: “For all purposes the race is tied.” Actually to be fair though the New York Times wasn’t that far off. Wait, what? 

The Times’ Cohn looks at several scenarios for how the election might play out.

[…] On the other hand, if Trump won all the seven states the
Times is focusing on, he would get a healthy 312 seats.

So the Times kind of, sort of, got it right, by hedging their bets. But I digress.

Why did the polls get it so wrong?

Polls are based on sound mathematical principles. This means that if you do a random poll, then go back in time and do the same poll again, you will get the same or almost the same result, even though you’ve polled different people. You will only get a different result if you choose to poll on a different date, using a different methodology…or if your methodology is faulty. 

If you tell someone they’re deplorable, uneducated, misogynistic and garbage, just because they support a particular candidate, they’re going to end up not telling anyone they support that particular candidate, including when someone from a polling company asks which candidate they’re voting for. 

Is it any surprise then that the polls got it so wrong? 

And then there’s this:

Gee, I wonder where those 20 million votes went? I mean, damn. If only those 20 million had voted. Then Kamala would have won by a whisker, just like all the polls said she would. 

And every state that Harris won did not require voter ID. 

I wonder why?

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