By the numbers: Trump vs. RCP vs. FiveThirtyEight

No matter who ends up winning the presidency, one thing is clear: The polling industry is in deep, deep trouble:

RIP the polling industry.

— Caroline Baum (@cabaum1) November 4, 2020

If pollsters had any sense of decency, they’d explain exactly how the messed up and do it publicly:

@ChrisStirewalt
Polls have been “great”?
C’mon man. Explain Ohio for starters. Then go from there. Whatever happens, most pollsters stand in disgrace.

— Kimberley Strassel (@KimStrassel) November 4, 2020

Remember that +17 lead for Biden in Wisconsin?

Forget Ohio. The +17 Biden in Wisconsin was beyond nuts.

— Beth Baumann (@eb454) November 4, 2020

And we know it’s still preliminary, but here’s how much President Trump outperformed the final polling averages at RealClearPolitics and FiveThirtyEight.

RCP:

We're not final yet of course, but a look at how much Trump overperfomed the RCP averages in swing states:

OH: +7
WI: +6
IA: +6
TX: +5
FL: +4.5
NC: +1
GA: +1
AZ: -2.5
MN: -3

This could end up being a much worse night for polling than 2016, which is pretty remarkable.

— Josh Jordan (@NumbersMuncher) November 4, 2020

FiveThirtyEight:

And now a look at how much Trump overperfomed the 538 averages in swing states:

OH: +7
WI: +8
IA: +7
TX: +5
FL: +6
NC: +3
GA: +3
MN: +2
AZ: -1

A really rough night for polls and a disastrous night for certain pollsters such as Quinnipiac who showed Biden doing so much better.

— Josh Jordan (@NumbersMuncher) November 4, 2020

And it’s not just national polls that were way off. District polls were awful, too:

So two things:

1) Biden is well on his way to flipping MI & WI (in addition to AZ & #NE02) and is doing well enough in PA's completed counties to be on track to win there
2) Polls (esp. at district-level) have rarely led us more astray & it's going to take a long time to unpack

— Dave Wasserman (@Redistrict) November 4, 2020

Of course, we really don’t expect anything to change:

Today: "wow, the polls were pretty far off, maybe we should have taken them with a grain of salt."

Next Tuesday: "Here's Nate Entrails with a deep dive analysis of the latest tracking numbers from the NBS-Squippippinac Approve-O-Meter"

— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) November 4, 2020

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