The polls might not have been that wrong

Posted 1pm UK time

As we watched initial results come in on election night, pundit after pundit declared this year’s polls to be the worst in recent history. Such proclamations were likely premature. We will have to wait until counting is completed in all battleground states before we make any concrete judgement, but it is already looking far from the industry-wide disaster some have gleefully portrayed it as.

In the state of Florida, the final count is likely to be within five points of the FiveThirtyEight average. That’s not great, but it’s also not exactly terrible. Whatever the result in Arizona, Georgia and North Carolina, the averages there were easily within the standard margin of error. We will have to wait on Pennsylvania, but the error there will also not be as bad as initially feared. The biggest miss so far appears to be in Wisconsin, where the polls still predicted a Joe Biden win. Don’t get me wrong, I firmly believe that polling success should be judged on the margins, not the predicted winner, but unfortunately that’s not how narratives are often formed.

Once counting is complete, expect a more detailed breakdown on the subject (hopefully next week). For now, I will leave you with this.

To me, the point of bringing up Joe Biden’s massive polling lead was never to predict that he was going to win big. Instead, it was to say that he could withstand even a major polling error in Donald Trump’s direction. It would seem he did.