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Commentary By James Piereson

Statistical Questions About the Iowa Poll

Governance Elections

On the poll’s sixteen-point mistake.

The presidential election is now (thankfully) over, with Donald Trump winning a solid victory over Vice President Harris both in the popular vote (51 percent to 48 percent) and in the Electoral College (312 to 226). The various pollsters did their usual mediocre job in forecasting the ultimate outcome, with many predicting a deadlock in the popular vote or a slim victory for Vice President Harris.

Several pollsters—AtlasIntel, Rasmussen, Trafalgar, and InsiderAdvantage—correctly forecast the surge for Trump in the national vote and in the battleground states. Because the RealClearPolitics average of presidential polls included those surveys, it accurately tracked the final outcome on November 5. The CBS, CNN, New York Times, and Washington Post polls came in near the bottom of the rankings of pollsters’ accuracy, which is not surprising in view of the left-wing tilt of their sponsors, who encourage bias in their polls in the same way they do bias in their reporting.

Continue reading the entire piece here at The New Criterion

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James Piereson is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. Naomi Schaefer Riley is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and the author of No Way to Treat a Child.

Photo by Stefania Pelfini, La Waziya/Getty Images