Answering Questions

Gareth Beckham

Pundits_PollingChapter4.pptx

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The Big Questions

The Election of Donald J. Trump

“Why did the pundits and pollsters get it wrong?”

Introduction

Leading into election night, most national polls showed Hillary Clinton with a slight edge over Donald Trump of about 3 percentage points. Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight election forecast gave Clinton an over 70 percent chance of winning. Yet, despite these polls and projections, Trump won the electoral vote with 304 electoral votes compared with Clinton’s 227 electoral votes.

Why did the pundits and pollsters get it wrong?

Key Topics (1 of 1)

The differences in national versus state polls

The challenges of polling

Media coverage of elections (coverage of the horse race versus the issues)

Key Terms/People (1 of 3)

FiveThirtyEight: Respected polling-analysis web site (https://fivethirtyeight.com/), run by journalist/statistician Nate Silver.

pundit: a subject-matter expert whom the media frequently calls on to give opinions about issues facing the public.

voter turnout: The share of eligible voters who show up at the polls and cast ballots in an election.

margin of error: a statistical measure of the reliability of polling data.

Key Terms/People (2 of 3)

election of 2000: Bitterly contested presidential election between George W. Bush (R) and Al Gore (D) in which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on the disputed ballot count in Florida in favor of Bush. As a result, Bush won the White House although Gore received the larger share of the national popular vote.

data analytics: the process of scrutinizing data and extracting qualitative and quantitative insights from it.

“alternative facts”: A much ridiculed expression used by Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway to reframe falsehoods as truths.

Key Terms/People (3 of 3)

the “horse race”: Election coverage that focuses on finishes in the polls instead of the issues.

exit polls: Public opinion surveys conducted by major media pollsters to predict electoral winners with speed and precision.

Ross Perot: American billionaire businessman who challenged Bill Clinton (D) and George H. W. Bush (R) as a third-party candidate in the 1992 presidential election.

Billy Bush: Disgraced former host of Access Hollywood who was caught on tape inciting Donald Trump to boast about sexually predatory behavior.

Video

Go to https://youtu.be/IihvRq4pomE to view this video.