Politlcal Polls Were Unable To Predict 2016 Election Results
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NORTH TEXAS (CBSDFW.COM) - There is shock and awe among many Americans today who woke to find a different candidate headed to the White House than even the experts predicted.
Dr. Matthew Wilson, an associate professor of Political at Southern Methodist University (SMU) has some opinions as to what turned the tide in the election.
Wilson said the 2016 election is one that will be studied for a long time. And that it revealed a range of problems with everything from the polling industry, to which states are in play, to who is mostly likely to vote.
Wilson says the presidential election not only jarred millions of American voters but was also a shock the people who specialize in predicting the outcomes. "it certainly I think came as a surprise to most analysts [and] most market forecasters. [It was] very similar to the Brexit vote that we saw in Britain this past summer. What was a close polling result, but looked to go the other way, actually was off by a few points."
So where does he think the polling experts and analysts went wrong? A big part of it - he says - was in modeling who is a likely voter. Dr. Wilson says trump supporters were extremely motivated.
"In many ways I think they saw this as their last best chance to reassert themselves in America," he said. "And I think that we saw African American turnout lower than it's been in the past. I think we saw youth voter turnout lower than it's been in the past, and those two things definitely affected the final distribution of support."
Hillary Clinton could have clinched the election even with a loss in the swing states of Ohio and Florida. Wilson said he watched the scales start to tip after midnight, when Wisconsin was called for Donald Trump.
"That was the first state in the so-called Blue Wall. That was the first of the states that have gone Democratic, all the time since 1988, that Trump flipped. We see that it also happened later in Pennsylvania and likely in Michigan."
Wilson thinks this election is going to lead to a lot of soul searching -- especially among many in the Democratic Party who thought it had the election wrapped up. In her concession speech earlier Wednesday, Hillary Clinton said the nation "is more deeply divided than we thought."
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