Historical Footnotes

[poliphilo]

1. Just a side issue, really but the pollsters called it wrong on Brexit and now they've called it wrong on the US elections. That's a pretty impressive record of failure.

2. Ailz tells me The Scotsman led with the story, "Aberdeen Business Owner Wins Presidential Election."

Comments

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

I don't know what precise result the polls were predicting, but I think that right before the election they were saying it would be close but that Hillary would win. In fact, she did gain more votes than Trump and if it had been simply on raw vote numbers, she would have won. However, there's this complicated electoral college things which just gave Trump the edge. Rather like our system can put a party in power with a minority of the votes cast.

If the figures a friend was quoting on Facebook were correct, it worked out that roughly 50% of Americans didn't vote. Just under 25% voted for Trump, just under 25% for Hillary and the odd couple of percent went to the third party candidates. So in this case, the polls possibly weren't all that wrong it's just difficult to be exact when things are so close. The same actually applies to Brexit.

[kamomil.livejournal.com]

I was hoping that if more people spoiled their ballot, than voted for a candidate, that they could start over with better candidates.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Yes it was close- but it's in close elections that the work of pollsters comes into its own- and if they can't get it right there's no point. On the other hand If everybody knows there's going to be a landslide who needs a pollster?

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

This is true! Though it all comes down to sampling, degrees of accuracy and statistics. So really the only message you should take from a close poll is that it's close and could go either way!

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Exactly.

By the time the campaign ended I had a gut feeling that Trump was going to win. Turns out my gut was more reliable that the pollsters.