Why the Michigan Polls Were Wrong

Washington Post: “In 2008, Barack Obama never filed paperwork to be an official Michigan candidate, and when the day of the election rolled around, his team encouraged people to vote ‘uncommitted.’ Hillary Clinton won the state with 54.6 percent of the vote, and uncommitted came in second. Total turnout was only about 600,000, since many voters didn’t bother to turn out for a race that didn’t mean anything.”

“For pollsters to know what an electorate will look like in an election, they look at what’s happened in past contests. That gives them a sense of what sort of composition of poll respondents will reflect the actual turnout on Election Day. But in Michigan, the most recent election was a weird one, in which turnout was dampened. Michigan so far is the only state that has seen more Democratic votes in 2016 than in 2008, with about 1.2 million people turning out Tuesday. Trying to predict what that turnout would look like based on half as many voters in a weird election eight years ago means there was a good chance the polls would be off.”