There's no alternative
This was the most-polled election in history and they still go it wrong. In most states, badly wrong.
Looking back four years I wrote about how Clinton had a 3 point lead of Trump before the election and what I wrote then applies just as much now.
Ultimately, pollsters could completely blow this one but when the next election comes along, we'll be playing the same game. There's just no way to get away from the polls.
For a larger sample, here are all the polls released today. Let's just call it a three-point Clinton lead. Trump's hope has to be that there is some kind of systematic error in a key assumption like turnout, demographics or that his voters were shy in online and phone polls.
I'm absolutely sure that pollsters did everything they could think of to fix it this time and they still failed. It's baffling.
I look back at the 2018 midterms and they seemed to fix it there. They had Democrats winning by 7 points and they ended up winning by 8.
People love to talk about road signs and anecdotal reports but that's hardly a reasonable basis for a trade. Or at least it shouldn't be. But here we are again.
What's most baffling is that you can't really explain what happened. I highlighted yesterday that the Hispanic and black votes could tip to Trump. The Hispanic vote certainly shifted in some states, but not all; and that certainly doesn't explain Trump's performance in states with few Hispanic or black voters.
Was it the shy Trump voter? That's not clear either. Take Maine. Trump lost by 12 points -- exactly as predicted by the pollsters -- but Republican Senator Susan Collins won by 8 points. She was expected to lose by 4 points. Are there shy Collins voters? That doesn't make any sense.
I tend to circle back to Trump's ability to target small groups of voters with compelling messages. I think warnings about socialism hit the mark in Miami. I think stacking the courts worked in others, including Maine. It's also clear that Trump alone seems to be able to motivate people to show up on election day unlike anyone else.
I wish I could say that pollsters would learn from this and fix it, but I'm still not confident that they will figure out what happened.
Still, if you're trading on an election you basically have two options: Trade on polls or trade on gut instinct. What else is there?
