Jim Geraghty: Election Polls not that far off
My last message to you, the Wednesday morning after the election, asked how the polls could be so wrong. After further review, one of the ironies of this shocking election was that the polls weren’t really wildly off at all.
The final RealClearPolitics average of national polls showed Hillary Clinton ahead by 3.3 points. She led by 4 points in the surveys commissioned by The Economist, ABC News/Washington Post, Gravis, NBC News/Wall Street Journal, and CBS News. Hillary’s currently ahead by… 1.3 percent in the national popular vote. When all is said and done, and those last absentees in California get added up, it could be close to 2 percent. Not that far off!
.. The final RCP average in Florida was Trump ahead by two-tenths of a percentage point. He won by 1.2 percent!
.. The final RCP average in Ohio was Trump ahead by 3.5 percentage points. He won by 8.5 percent—a bigger margin, but almost all of the final polls had Trump ahead here.
.. Michigan was one of the biggest surprises. The final RCP average in Michigan was Clinton ahead by 3.5 percentage points—but that was the smallest margin in the average for the entirety of the general election. The polls didn’t project Trump’s two-tenths of a percentage point margin of victory, but they did tell the story of late Trump momentum.