"After Trump's surprise victory in 2016, there were many questions about whether the polls could be trusted again. While it did inject a healthy dose of caution in interpreting the polls, there was an expectation that the polls would get closer to the mark this time — there were fewer undecideds than in 2016, and the pollsters had taken steps to capture some of the Trump-leaning demographics that had been missed in the last campaign..."
Actually polls unless unnaturally expensive and sophisticated can not predict the election results because
* There are so many wasted votes --
more than 40 percent of the vote in Arizona, Florida, Texas votes was wasted - the votes cast for Clinton
7M Trump votes in California and New York were wasted.
* Due to varying voter-to EC delegate ratio from state to state and to varying closeness of the race state to state, it took many votes to elect an EC delegate in some places and much fewer elsewhere.
90,000 votes in Hawaii, 181,000 in Massachusetts, 266,000 in New York were used to elect a pro-Clinton delegate.
54,000 in Alaska, 141,000 in Wisconsin were used to elect a pro-Trump delegate.
* It was a wrong -winner win anyway - Trump received 46 percent of the vote to Cliinton's 48 percent. Clinton received 3M more votes than Trump and still lost.
* A slight shift of votes would have resulted in Clinton victory.
A shift of only 39,000 votes in three states would have given the presidency to Clinton.
This is detailed in my blog "What if the U.S. 2016 pres. election had been held using Alternative Voting?"
A variety of other (larger) shifts in other states instead would have likewise ensured that Clinton, the most popular candidate country-wide, would have been elected.
How could anyone predict the result in such an almost-random election?
Thanks for reading.
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