Here’s Every Major Poll That Got Donald Trump’s Election Win Wrong by Brian Flood.
From the post:
When Donald Trump shocked the world to become the president-elect on Tuesday night, the biggest loser wasn’t his opponent Hillary Clinton, it was the polling industry that tricked America into thinking we’d be celebrating the first female president right about now.
The polls, which Trump has been calling inaccurate and rigged for months, made it seem like Clinton was a lock to occupy the White House come January.
Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight is supposed to specialize in data-based journalism, but the site reported on Tuesday morning that Clinton had a 71.4 percent chance of winning the election. The site was wrong about the outcome in major battleground states including Florida, North Carolina and Pennsylvania, and Trump obviously won the election in addition to the individual states that were supposed to vote Clinton. Silver wasn’t the only pollster to botch the 2016 election.
…
Trump’s victory should teach would be data scientists this important lesson:
Diversity is important in designing data collection
Some of the reasons given for the failure of prediction in this election:
- People without regular voting records voted.
- People polled weren’t honest about their intended choices.
- Pollster’s weren’t looking for a large, angry segment of the population.
All of which can be traced back to a lack of imagination/diversity in the preparation of the polling instruments.
Ironic isn’t it?
Strive for diversity, including people whose ideas you find distasteful.
Such as vocal Trump supporters. (Substitute your favorite villain.)