Pollster Attempts to Explain The Hidden Trump Vote Polls Missed
A new theory from an established pollster explains “the hidden trump vote” that showed up Election Day 2016 and shocked the world.
It’s quite simple actually and goes like this – Trump supporters are more likely the personality types who don’t want to waste their time on the phone with a pollster who called unsolicited.
From BusinessInsider
“Polls might not be capable of predicting elections,” Patrick Murray, the head of Monmouth University’s polling institute, told Business Insider.
Murray’s final Pennsylvania poll showed Clinton with a 4-point lead with a 4.9 percentage point margin of error, which still was not big enough to capture the margin — 1.2 points — by which Trump would win the state.
“It’s an imprecise science,” he said. “It’s a science with a margin.”
With a level of distrust in statistics and polling, heightened by Trump’s months of railing against “dishonest” polls and media outlets, Murray said the result of the election only adds to how “very hard” it is “to fight against that.”
“Do we ever win back the public trust, or in fact, should you even try?” he said. “What did we miss? We know it’s systematic. Can we correct for it?”
But Murray already had developed a theory for what happened: “Non-response among a major core of Trump voters.”
What happened?
Murray’s theory looked as if it had some legs.
For instance, in Pennsylvania and Michigan, Clinton’s total percentage of the final vote fell within 2 points of what had been predicted for her in the polling average. In Wisconsin, Clinton wound up with a near spot-on level of support as the polls had forecast, outperforming the polling average by 0.1 points.
But Trump outperformed his polling average by 4.5 points in Pennsylvania, 5.6 points in Michigan, and an unheard-of 7.6 points in Wisconsin. Underperformances by Libertarian nominee Gary Johnson and Green Party nominee Jill Stein may have contributed to that result, but it didn’t account for such a large discrepancy.
“It’s not that they lied to pollsters, but they didn’t even pick up the phone,” Murray said.
In his final Pennsylvania poll, Murray said, he was accurate around the Philadelphia metro area through Scranton and in the Pittsburgh metro area. But he missed the central, rural part of the state by 20 points: He had polled a 10-point Trump lead while Trump ended up winning that area by 30 points.
“That’s probably the problem across all swing states, and that’s the first state that I looked at because it’s the one I did most recently,” he said. “We were getting metro areas correct, but in the non-metro areas, and this will be true in Wisconsin and Michigan as well, that, a certain type of Trump voter seemed more [unwilling] to talk to pollsters. And, it plays into this whole anti-establishment sense.”
“Just a few points off … is what will cause the entire narrative to be off,” he continued. “This wasn’t just, ‘You got this state poll wrong or this poll didn’t go this way.’ This was a systematic miss of all the polls in the same direction. And I’m going to guess that on metro areas it was spot on.
“We were missing something in rural areas.”
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I predicted the reason before the election.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlc58zQBHgI
The mainstream media painted a narrative for Hillary that did not consider the voters in rural America. And they all believed their own spin. The problem is not that they didn’t accurately poll those people. The mainstream media tried to help Hillary in her strategy of demonizing Trump but went a bridge too far. I even hated Trump at some point because of what I was hearing in the media. But then it started to sound like hyperbole to me. I researched further and discovered a lot of it didn’t hold up. All the while, the media was downplaying Hillary’s shady (and possibly criminal) dealings. Americans have a sense of fairness, and it was apparent they were being unfair to Trump. That’s when I became a supporter of his.
The media chose to marginalize all Trump supporters, painting them as white supremacists and such. I wonder why those people clammed up to the media when they came calling. The media showed such disdain for half of America. I have news for you. This election was not an outlier, where old rules didn’t apply. It is the new beginning, where people don’t just listen to propaganda and believe it anymore. The next election will be an even bigger surprise, because the DNC just doesn’t get it yet. Chuck Todd still thinks he’s fighting for Hillary to win and Trump to lose, a month after the election. I have bought lots of popcorn to eat while enjoying my schadenfreude in the coming 4 years. Oh-and if Trump doesn’t live up to his promises–Or at least try to live up to them, many of his followers will give him hell. Unlike the norm, where pols lie to get in and then their supporters never hold them accountable.
They is always “missing something in the rural areas”.Therein lies THEIR problem. Most of us ‘deplorables’ live NOT in cities,but in small towns/communities out in the country.And when ‘city’ gets too close,we sell and go further out in the country.We have all but been ignored by politicians….with the exception of Trump.I’m 65 years old and this is the first president in my memory that really cares about the ‘little’ people.Not even Reagan did that to the extent that Trump did.And here’s the kicker,Trump means it,and is already rocking the boat and saving jobs.Just wait till he’s sworn in and he will really clean house and drain the swamp.As for him having some insiders with him,remember this old addage,”keep your friends close,and your enemies even closer”…
It’s no Secret.. the polls were alway rigged in Hitlery’s favor so dumb voters were convinced she was definitely going to win
I find it odd that no one saw this coming. The outcome was seen in internal pools by both parties towards the end. No one wonders why Hillary all of the sudden 2 weeks before the elections showed up with every bit of starpower she could muster? Every single online poll I could find had trump winning by huge margins sometimes up to 80/20 the left is usually the dominate internet group. Trump was packing stadiums all over the country 2 3 4 times a day every day for months.
I have seen or heard a lot of people who have never voted before, middle age and older, that registered and voted for the first time. Overwhelmingly for Trump