Yes, I'm talking about the beginning of election day. I'm not claiming malice on the part of any pollsters, simply a tactic their models didn't account for.
You can see their chance of winning history in a line graph. October has a significant dip, to be sure, but it had recovered by November back to the ~30% it ultimately stayed at. Their 'polls plus' model also never dipped quite as far as the polls only model.
Regardless, the initial comment was he 'easily' has 4 more years in him. Except now he's facing impeachment, has Republican allies breaking ranks, a long list of unfulfilled campaign promises, big name televangelists saying he's in danger of losing "the mandate of heaven", more and more evidence coming out about Russian interference in the election, and facing a party that knows it must focus on states that it largely ignored. Trump won in several states with fewer votes than Romney lost with - the Democrats aren't going to ignore those states again. The Russians are unlikely to be as effective again.
I'm not saying he's going to lose - I could very well see him winning - but acting as if it is an easy thing is absolutely nuts. In a lot of ways it is a significantly worse landscape for him, with lots more room for it to get even worse.
Yes, but they completely missed the point of the data. Popular vote is relatively easy to predict, but Trump's campaign reached really deep into quiet conservatives who wouldn't vote otherwise.
Those people are still not going to respond to polls, and since they live in low-population areas, they won't affect the popular vote much, but they hit the electoral college hard.
The Dem voters in the primaries are a predictable population, and polling for primaries is relatively easier.
This is something I've seen very few people actually remark on or take into consideration: the people who wouldn't have come to the election polls in the first race certainly won't be responding to the straw polls being conducted now and the models can't really reflect that. Or at least they don't currently seem to.
But, as said upthread, they predicted downballot elections in 2016 pretty well too. So unless there's been an improvement in downballot predictions - not just good absolute performance - why should we expect any difference in 2020?
>but Trump's campaign reached really deep into quiet conservatives who wouldn't vote otherwise.
There's really not any evidence of this. In the rust belt states he won that turned the tide of the election, there was less turnout on both sides than previous elections. It's just that Democrat voting turnout was down even more than Republican voting turnout.
You know the polls also accurately predicted the gubernatorial elections (and other statewide elections) in Wisconsin (D+1), Pennsylvania (D+19), and Michigan (D+8.5) right?
If he even finishes* his term that is..