Ask HN: Why were the US election polls so far off?

4 pointswolframhempel2 comments

For pretty much the entire election season the polls saw Clinton ahead of Trump - with still as much as 48% to 44% on election day. What was the problem? Selection of focus groups? Sample sizes?

View on HN

I think you're not including margin of error. If that had gone Clinton's way she'd have won by quite a lot. It didn't, it went Trump's way and he won by a narrow margin.

See also Obama's last election - if the error margin votes had gone the other way he'd have narrowly lost.

EDIT: Also, "Shy voter" is probably a thing. This campaign, and a lot of recent US politics, is deeply polarised. It's not surprising people don't say they were going to vote for trump when asked.

I really wouldn't say it was a "small margin". Trump won with 218:290 - one of the most decisive votes of recent history and referred to as either a landslide or an upset by the media

Reply on news.ycombinator.com