The Performance of the Polls

Moon, Nick

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-40934-4_4

Cited by 1 publication

(2 citation statements)

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“…Our conclusion of an existing problem that needs to be examined and solved is in line with the findings of other scholars such as Prosser and Mellon [34], Cowley and Kavanagh [36], Moon [37], and Toff [38]. All agree that current methods need to be re-examined to improve the accuracy of pre-election polls.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 84%

“…They suggest applying multilevel regression and post-stratification methods to pre-election polling. Others also joined, such as Cowley and Kavanagh [36], Moon [37], and Toff [38]. The Report of the Inquiry into the 2015 British general election opinion polls [39] stated that the error is not new, but in any case, suggested that the primary cause of the error in 2015 was unrepresentative samples.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The 2016 US Presidential Elections: What Went Wrong in Pre-Election Polls? Demographics Help to Explain

Zeedan

2019

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This study examined the accuracy of the various forecasting methods of the 2016 US Presidential Elections. The findings revealed a high accuracy in predicting the popular vote. However, this is most suitable in an electoral system which is not divided into constituencies. Instead, due to the Electoral College method used in the US elections, forecasting should focus on predicting the winner in every state separately. Nevertheless, miss-predicted results in only a few states led to false forecasting of the elected president in 2016. The current methods proved less accurate in predicting the vote in states that are less urbanized and with less diverse society regarding race, ethnicity, and religion. The most challenging was predicting the vote of people who are White, Protestant Christians, and highly religious. In order to improve pre-election polls, this study suggests a few changes to the current methods, mainly to adopt the “Cleavage Sampling” method that can better predict the expected turnout of specific social groups, thus leading to higher accuracy of pre-election polling.

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