Election Night Takeaway

There are several major takeaways from this election. The first is the obvious one. Like other folks, I relied on local and state polls. They were better in 2016, but not by much. The polling errors are even worse this year. Whether this is people on purpose lying to pollsters, or their methods don’t work. This means that polling companies are no longer capturing voting preferences. They did much better in the midterms. Why I was more trusting of them. The national poll balance usually means that the person ahead will have an easier time. This year…we are still waiting.

This means that in 2024 I will not consume polls for breakfast. I don’t care if they are the Sienna polls, or Gallup, or for that matter Rasmussen. I don’t think we can trust the polls. At one point in our history, we had no polls. We are back to that. Polls were a 20th-century innovation, but it is the methodology stupid.

I apologize, I expected a tsunami. The reason for that is quite frankly an industry that once was reliable. At this point, I will join the crowd that will never again trust polls. This means that I lack the tools to make an educated guess. This uncertainty is both puzzling and earth-shattering. I am used to having a certain comfort in knowing, more or less, that you could know with some certainty where a race was heading. We can’t anymore.