State of the Polls, 2019

Nate Silver: “Much maligned for their performance in the 2016 general election — and somewhat unfairly so, since the overall accuracy of the polls was only slightly below average that year by historical standards — American election polls have been quite accurate since then. Their performance was very strong in the 2018 midterms, despite the challenge of having to poll dozens of diverse congressional districts around the country, many of which had not had a competitive election in years. Polls have also generally been accurate in the various special elections and off-year gubernatorial elections that have occurred since 2016, even though those are also often difficult races to poll.”

“Does that mean everything is looking up in the industry? Well, no. We’ll introduce some complications in a moment. But I do want to re-emphasize that opening takeaway, since the media is just flatly wrong when it asserts that the polls can’t be trusted. In fact, American election polls are about as accurate as they’ve always been.”