Amy Walter: “One of the theories given for why pre-election polling underestimated President Trump’s share of the vote was that pollsters failed to anticipate the huge surge in turnout among Trump’s base. One hypothesis is that these voters presented themselves as ambivalent voters — showing less interest in voting than others — and as such, didn’t make it through a likely voter screen.”
“However, given the fact that the long-stated goal of the Trump campaign was to find, register and turn out every single person who fit into the Trump demographic —especially white voters living in small town and rural areas of the Midwest — the fact that these voters ultimately showed up Election Day shouldn’t necessarily come as such a surprise.”
“Regardless, the battle over ‘what the pollsters got wrong’ is missing the bigger picture: Trump’s all-base-all-the-time strategy was a failure.”
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