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The results of the U.S. presidential vote came as a surprise to many. Almost every national poll gave Hillary Clinton a lead over Donald Trump and the polls also suggested she held the lead in enough states to win the election.
Instead, though Trump lost the popular vote, he won the electoral college and will be America's next president.
As mail-in votes continue to be counted in Democratic-friendly states, Clinton's edge over Trump in the popular vote will likely grow — and the national error in the polls will shrink. Still, at the state-level the error was significant enough to up-end expectations.
What did the polls miss? Was there a problem with how polls — and the uncertainty intrinsic to the science — were interpreted? And where does the media and the polling industry go from here?
Joining me on this week's episode of The Pollcast is pollster David Coletto, CEO of Abacus Data.
You can listen to the podcast here, subscribe to future episodes here, and listen to past episodes here.
The parallels between the U.S. elections of 2000 and 2016 are striking. A candidate seeking a third consecutive term in the White House for the Democratic Party narrowly wins the popular vote but loses the Electoral College to the Republican nominee, while a third-party candidate takes a significant and potentially decisive share of the vote.
Does that make Gary Johnson and Jill Stein the 2016 equivalent of Ralph Nader?
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Pollsters are diving deep into their data to try to figure out why things went so wrong for them on Tuesday.
Answers may not begin to emerge for some time. But the results of the U.S. election in the closest swing states provide clues to what the polls might have missed — and how those misses led pollsters astray.
The error the polls made at the national level was both relatively small and enormously consequential. Hillary Clinton's margin over Trump averaged a little more than three points in the polls. As votes continue to be counted, Clinton could end up ahead in the popular vote by about one point.
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Around the United States and throughout the world, people are waking up this morning and asking, 'What just happened?'
Donald Trump, the Republican nominee for the American presidency, was elected to lead the free world, against the expectations of most polls, pundits and political observers. He did it by getting his core supporters — white Americans — out to vote for him in bigger numbers than expected, delaying for at least one more electoral cycle the demographic challenges facing the Republican Party.
As of writing, it wasn't clear whether Trump would emerge with the highest share of the popular vote (ed: he won't). But winning the support of most Americans was a secondary concern. He needed to win the support of the most Americans in the right states, and he did just that.
You can read the rest of this article here.
When Americans cast their ballots today, the polls suggest they will probably elect Hillary Clinton as their next president. But the margin between her and Donald Trump remains narrow enough that the outcome might not be clear until late into the evening or even early morning.
So how might the night unfold in either scenario?
According to Monday's update of the Presidential Poll Tracker, Clinton holds a three-point lead over Trump nationally. That margin has held firm over the past week, suggesting Americans' views of the two candidates may have crystallized in these final days.
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As the American election campaign rolls into its final weekend before Tuesday's vote, Hillary Clinton remains the favourite to become the next U.S. president. Her edge over Donald Trump remains narrow but her recent decline in the polls seems to have halted.
Nevertheless, the margin she enjoys over the Republican nominee remains small enough that it could be overturned over these final days.
As of Friday's Presidential Poll Tracker update, Clinton has the support of 47.4 per cent of decided voters, compared to 44.5 per cent for Trump. That margin of 2.9 points is far more comfortable than the 1.9-point margin she had in the polls at the beginning of this week.
You can read the rest of this article here.
The American election is now just days away and polls suggest the race is the closest it has been since Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton secured their respective parties' nominations in July.
Whatever the result, what will this campaign mean for the future of the Republicans, the Democrats and the United States?
Joining me on this week's episode of The Pollcast are Bob Rae, former premier of Ontario and past interim leader of the federal Liberal Party, and James Moore, former federal Conservative cabinet minister.
You can listen to the podcast here, subscribe to future episodes here, and listen to past episodes here.
Little more than a week ago, Hillary Clinton was leading Donald Trump in national polling by six points or more. Panic was setting in among Republicans that they would not only lose the White House, but maybe the House and Senate, too. Now, with only days to go before election day, the gap is just two points — and closing.
But despite Trump's improving odds, he still faces a stiff challenge in cobbling together enough states to give him a winning electoral map. Nevertheless, the momentum is not heading in Clinton's direction, a shift that was building in the polls before her trouble with emails re-emerged on Friday.
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Depending on which presidential candidate you favour, American polls have something to appeal to all tastes. A competitive race? A narrow lead for Donald Trump? A landslide for Hillary Clinton? The polls have you covered.
But that doesn't mean that we have no idea where things really stand in the U.S. election. The consensus of national polling still points to a comfortable Clinton lead — and that lead is corroborated by state-level polling that also heavily favours her.
You can read the rest of this article here.
Donald Trump's worsening position in the polls was sparked by his poor performance during the first presidential debate and has been sustained by a torrent of problems dogging his campaign — including the emergence of allegations of inappropriate behaviour or sexual assault from about a dozen women.
Tonight's third and final presidential debate may be Trump's last opportunity to turn things around. And it's women — for whom Trump says he has "great respect" — who might just be the most significant obstacle to his White House ambitions.
You can read the rest of this article here.
One of the few remaining polls showing Donald Trump in a competitive race with Hillary Clinton turns out to have been overly influenced by one young African-American voter from Illinois who, unlike virtually everyone else who fits his demographic profile, is a committed Trump supporter.
It's another knock against the credibility of polls at a time when Donald Trump is talking about the election being "rigged" and questioning the legitimacy of many reliable election surveys.
Trump has complained that a hostile media and widespread voter fraud, or a combination of both, could steal the election from him.
You can read the rest of the article here.
If Donald Trump's polling numbers don't improve, and soon, he won't win the White House.
But if the bottom continues to fall out of his campaign, he might drag the Republican-controlled Senate and House of Representatives down along with him.
Americans will not only be voting for their next president on Nov. 8. They will also be filling many other offices, ranging from county sheriff to state governor. The most important races after the presidency, however, will be in the two chambers of the U.S. Congress.
You can read the rest of this analysis here.
Even before the release of audio of lewd and offensive comments about women Donald Trump made in 2005, and before scores of fellow Republicans called on him to step down, Trump's chances of winning the U.S. presidency were looking slim.
They may now be non-existent.
But if Trump somehow weathers this storm, an electoral map that puts him in the White House can be cobbled together if he can swing just a few battleground states in his direction.
You can read the rest of this article here.
The next confrontation between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton will take place on Sunday at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri.
The first debate did not go very well for Trump. Since that debate, Clinton's lead over the Republican nominee has grown in national polls and her electoral college advantage has solidified. At the second presidential debate, can Trump do anything to turn his campaign around?
Joining me to discuss the upcoming debate and the role of the media and polls on the U.S. presidential campaign is Matthew Yglesias, co-founder of Vox.
You can listen to the podcast here, subscribe to future episodes here, and listen to past episodes here.
Mike Pence, Donald Trump's Republican running mate for the U.S. presidency, narrowly won last night's debate against Hillary Clinton's VP candidate, Tim Kaine, according to a poll of voters who watched the vice-presidential bout.
But Pence's performance appears unlikely to have a significant impact on Trump's chances of taking the White House.
The CNN/ORC poll, surveying 472 registered voters who had previously been contacted and said they would watch the debate, found that 48 per cent of respondents felt Pence had done the best job, compared with 42 per cent for Kaine.
You can read the rest of this article here.
Tonight's vice-presidential debate between Mike Pence and Tim Kaine will feature two of modern history's least-known vice-presidential candidates, vying to be next in line to two of the oldest U.S. presidential candidates ever to stand for the top job. The stakes are high.
But the debate is unlikely to have a major impact on the comparatively epic tilt between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.
Mike Pence, the Republican candidate, and Tim Kaine, for the Democrats, are unknown to many voters. According to Pollster's averages, one-third of Americans have no opinion of Pence, the Governor of Indiana. Kaine, a senator and former governor from Virginia, is a mystery to 40 per cent of voters.
You can read the rest of this article here.
After a rough few days for Donald Trump, the polls appear to be drifting back towards Hillary Clinton, erasing many of the gains the Republican candidate had made in the run-up to last Monday's presidential debate.
But the evidence that the race has shifted dramatically remains relatively thin, as only a handful of state and national polls have been published since last week's tilt.
The CBC's Presidential Poll Tracker now pegs Clinton's support among decided voters at 45.9 per cent, up 0.5 points from where she stood on the eve of the debate. Trump's support has slipped 0.6 points to 42.8 per cent.
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The hashtag #TrumpWon was trending on Twitter Tuesday. Partially boosted by sarcasm, it was fuelled primarily by Donald Trump, who was quick to claim he won Monday's debate by citing a slew of online polls that pegged him as the winner.
But there's a problem. None of the polls Trump has pointed to are actually legitimate polls. Instead, all of the scientific, real polls published so far have shown him to be the loser of the debate by significant margins.
In the world of public opinion research, the "online polls" that litter news websites are a plague. Whereas real surveys try to assemble representative samples of the population, these online polls are more of a gimmick or a game. Anyone can answer them. Often people can answer them multiple times. They can invite their friends, who likely think just like them, to answer the online polls on social media.
And then they can point to these completely unrepresentative and meaningless results as if they signal something important.
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On Monday night, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton will take part in the first presidential debate. The confrontation comes at a time when the polls are showing a tightening race.
And depending on who uses the platform best, the debate could set the tone for the remaining 46 days of this unpredictable campaign.
The debate will be held on Monday night at Hofstra University in Hempstead, New York. Hosted by the NBC's Lester Holt, the 90-minute affair will tackle three topics: America's Direction, Achieving Prosperity, and Securing America.
To help set up the debate, Keith Boag, the CBC's senior reporter in Washington, D.C., joins me on the latest episode of the Pollcast.
You can listen to the podcast here.
Not since a surge in the polls at the end of the Republican National Convention two months ago has Donald Trump been this close to winning the White House. But Trump has less margin for error than his Democratic rival, as his lead over Hillary Clinton in a number of swing states is slim.
According to the CBC's Presidential Poll Tracker, Clinton is currently averaging 44.7 per cent support among decided voters, compared with 42.8 per cent for Trump. The edge Clinton continues to hold over Trump has diminished rapidly — standing at well over six points in August and a little more than three points two weeks ago. That lead now sits at just 1.9 points.
While Clinton was already trending downward, the combined impact of her "deplorables" comment and her health issues surrounding a diagnosis of pneumonia may have contributed to her numbers dropping further. In polls conducted since her near collapse at a Sept. 11 commemoration, Clinton has averaged a lead of 1.3 points over Trump. Those same pollsters had her ahead by 2.2 points during the previous two weeks.
You can read the rest of this article here.
