The average governor and Senate polls were about a point more favorable to the Democrats than the result. Unlike 2016, this year the errors tended to cancel each other out, as one would hope they would. Repeated patterns of bias in the polling is somewhat worrying. And like in 2016, the polls were too favorable to Democrats in Florida and Republicans in Nevada. The polls were once again too favorable to Democratic candidates in Midwestern states like Indiana, Michigan and Ohio, though not in Pennsylvania or Wisconsin. There were some states where the polls were biased. ![]() Obviously, even if polling errors were smaller than average, it would be bad if one side benefited from them. Now, you might be wondering if the polling misses this year were more likely to benefit Democrats or Republicans. That’s better than the 80% historical average. ![]() This wasn’t a big problem on the House side, where the leader in 83% of district polling ended up winning the race. History suggested Democrats wouldn’t hold all of their small leads. The fact that there were so many close Senate races was the big reason why my final Senate forecast had Republicans winning more races than just in states where they led in the polling average. The same thing occurred in the Senate race, where the average poll was better than average (just 3 points off), but the race was close enough for a polling error to flip it from Democrat Bill Nelson to Republican Rick Scott. It just so happened that the race was tight and the polling error was enough to tilt the winner from Democrat Andrew Gillum in the polling to Republican Ron DeSantis in the results. The average poll in the Florida governor’s race was off by 4.4 points, which isn’t any larger than the average for gubernatorial polls this year. You can see that when you look at the averages in some of the individual states. Over 20% of pre-election polls for the Senate and governor’s races had margins of 2 points or less. Why the difference? Much of it has to do with a lot of races forecast to be close this year. Governor polls saw a nearly identical 76% of races called correctly, compared with 84% historically. This year nonpartisan Senate polls called the correct winner 77% of the time, compared with 84% historically. That’s 0.7 point more accurate than the average governor’s poll since 1998.īut there were also a number of cases where the polling had one candidate winning but the other candidate won the election. Likewise, the average governor’s poll had an error rate of 4.4 points. The average Senate poll historically has been off by 5.2 points, which means this year’s polls were a point better than average. The average poll in the Senate was off by only 4.2 points. Statewide polling also had a strong year, although it should be noted that Senate and governors’ polling did pick fewer winners than usual. That’s nearly 3 points better than average, which is off the charts good. That increase in accuracy was driven in large part by the Siena College/New York Times polls, whose surveys made up the bulk of district level polling and had an average absolute error of just about 3 points. Again, that means the average district poll was a full point closer to the result than usual. Nonpartisan House polls have historically missed the mark by an average of 5.9 points. The other way to poll House races is by individual district. This year (with some votes still to be counted) it looks like it’s going to be only 2.8 points, which is a full point closer to the result than the average. From 1998 to 2016, the difference between the average generic ballot poll and the House national vote was 3.8 points. The most familiar is the generic congressional ballot, which usually asks voters to say whether they will vote for the Democratic or Republican candidates in their districts. There are two different ways to poll House races. The biggest test of 2018 was the battle for control of the House. Nonpartisan polls taken within three weeks of the 2018 election were far more accurate t han the average poll since 1998. It turns out public polling passed this test with flying colors. Before the 2018 election, I said the best way to push back against those who call polls “fake news” was for the polls to predict the election results.
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