230: A Nail Biter
The election got more clear yesterday. States that we leaning Trump moved to be leaning Biden. We still don’t officially have a winner.
One thing that’s encouraging is just the raw turnout on both sides. Biden got 70 million votes which is a new record (Obama held it in 2008 with 69m) and Trump got 67 million votes too. Kudos to the American people for getting out there and expressing their voice.
The big loser seems to be the polling. The website FiveThirtyEight is known for poll accuracy and its founder, Nate Silver, for being unusually great at predicting based on polls. He’s now 0-2 over the past two elections. In every swing state but Arizona, Trump outperformed the FiveThirtyEight polling average.
The polls that Silver (and other pundits) use as inputs are flawed:
Poll respondents may be biased (e.g., Dem-leaning voters may be more likely to respond)
Polls can’t properly account for undecided voters (or preference falsification, which is when someone lies about their true choice)
Polls don’t adequately account for voter turnout
Polls are important as they can tell us (the public) and politicians what the country is thinking, but if they are wrong, then we’re all flying blind - which is bad for everybody.
Other Stuff
That’s it. More news rolling in this morning. We should know a President by the end of the weekend.
Only 64 more days to go