Pollster Mallory Newall said in an interview that aired Tuesday on Hill.TV’s “What America’s Thinking” that pollsters should rely on more than one indicator in their election forecasting.
“When it comes to election forecasting, I think we as pollsters have learned that you really shouldn’t be relying on just one singular model, one single indicator,” Newall, research director at Ipsos Public Affairs, told Hill.TV’s Joe Concha.
“This was really a lesson that we took away from 2016, applied it in 2018, and I think we’ll continue to hone it,” she added. “When you look at a lot of the states that have still some mixed results for 2018, not a lot of public polling was done in those places.”
Various pollsters and election forecasters were criticized following the 2016 election for predicting that President Trump would not win the presidency.
The American Association for Public Opinion Research found last year that the top problem with polling during the 2016 presidential race was that state-level polling underestimated Trump’s support in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin — three states that Trump unexpectedly won in 2016.
— Julia Manchester
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