
How Much the Polls Missed by in Every State - protomyth
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-much-the-polls-missed-by-in-every-state/
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alex-
The five most populous states all feature in the top half of this graph
(California 3rd, Texas 15th, Florida 18th, New York 12th, Illinois 5th)

While the five least populous states are mostly in the bottom half. (Wyoming
43rd, Vermont 21st, Alaska 30th, North Dakota 48th, South Dakota 44th)

It is much harder to find a small representative group in a larger population.
But I a surprised that the errors appear to favor overestimating trumps
margin. I would have thought that the sampling errors would go both ways.

Lots of possible explanations including coincidence, etc. But if feels like it
might be some pattern...?

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trendia
Yes. There was a strong stigma attached to voting for Trump, which made people
to falsely claim they were undecided or voting 3rd party.

Andrew Gelman (who wrote the textbook on Bayesian Data Analysis) says:

> Yes, the polls were wrong, but as I’ve written, they weren’t that wrong—they
> were off by about 2 percent.

[http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/201...](http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2016/11/reports_claiming_the_election_was_rigged_are_wrong.html)

