The polls got it wrong.
Most of the pollsters and election forecasters pegged Hillary Clinton as an easy winner in the Presidential election.
But on Election Night, voters delivered a decisive victory to Donald Trump and everyone immediately began wondering what the pollsters missed.
The key to Trump’s victory were the late deciding voters in key states.
This explains so much. Donald Trump won the election in the final days. pic.twitter.com/49z2qwscW1
— Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur) November 17, 2016
The Washington Post dug into the numbers and reported:
“If we grant that the numbers are all spot-on — a hefty “if,” given the wiggle room in exit polls — it would mean Trump in the final week gained about 4 full points in Wisconsin, 2.5 points in Pennsylvania, 2 points in Florida and 1.5 points in Michigan.
In each and every one of those states, those swings, if accurate, would account for Trump’s victory. According to the most up-to-date results, Trump won Wisconsin by 0.9 points, Pennsylvania by 1.1 points and Florida by 1.2 points, and he’s leading in Michigan by 0.2 points.
Trump’s likely electoral vote margin, assuming he wins Michigan, is looking like it’ll be 306-232. Without those four states, he loses to Clinton by almost the exact same margin, 307-231. Even if he just lost Florida and any of the other three states, he would have lost. If he won Florida but lost the other three, he would have lost. We’re only talking a shift of 1 percentage point or a little more. It was that close.
And if you look back at those much-derided polls, the additions of these late-deciders to the calculus doesn’t make them look so bad. If you take the final Real Clear Politics average in each state and adjust for the late-decider swing, Trump actually should have been the winner in Florida, Michigan and Pennsylvania.
The final polling average had Clinton by 1 point in Florida, about even in Michigan and up 2 in Pennsylvania. Each of those averages went a little toward Trump at the end, thanks to GOP pollster Trafalgar Group doing one-day polls the Sunday before Election Day. But even without the Trafalgar polls, the apparent late-decider Trump surge could help explain why they had the “wrong” winner.”
The high number of undecided voters heading into the election’s final days also indicated a significant number of them were Republican leaning voters who “came home” during the final days.
Polls throughout the campaign showed Hillary holding a lead based on stronger party unity.
She attracted the support of more Democrats than Trump did of Republicans.
This could be owed to Trump’s outsider status, with some conservatives being nervous about him on policy grounds and establishment #NeverTrump “Republicans” who rooted for him to lose so they could reassert the donor class globalist agenda for the 2020 Presidential cycle.
Another factor the polls missed was the large numbers of white voters who went for Obama in 2012, but switched to Trump.
In Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, urban turnout reached 2012 levels when Obama won both states comfortably.
But Trump was able to flip the scores of counties that voted to re-elect Obama in 2012 with his “America First” message.
In WI, just like PA, Milwaukee & Madison (just like Philly and Pittsburgh) delivered – rest of the state just swung hard from Obama > Trump
— Kyle Kondik (@kkondik) November 17, 2016
The polls missed two groups of people – late deciders and Obama voters who went Trump.
If the polls were wrong, it was because of these groups.
