We’re Beating Nate Silver at His Own Game!
To say the outcome of this election came as a shock would be an understatement. Almost all of the polls pointed to a victory for Hillary, and the media made it seem as if that victory was a lock. Even Nate Silver’s firm, FiveThirtyEight, gave Hillary Clinton a 71.4% chance of winning in their 2016 Election Forecast. It’s no wonder that so many people were caught off guard by the results.
Too bad the media didn’t listen to us! They say that a poll is only as good as the results, maybe all of these so-called pollsters weren’t asking the right questions. Our non-traditional methodology produces results that accurately predict the outcome of a presidential election 100% of the time, while we may have missed a few states (nobody’s perfect) our poll has never been wrong in the final outcome. Let’s take a look at how it breaks down.
Actual Results
The actual election ended with some pretty big surprises. Almost no one thought that Donald Trump would take Wisconsin, Michigan, or Pennsylvania; those four states along with Florida pretty much sealed the deal. Florida was expected to be a tight race, but everyone assumed that the Northeast would remain blue.
FiveThirtyEight’s Forecast
FiveThirtyEight predicted a Hillary win, though to be fair they did say it was tight. They predicted what most expected, that Hillary would have a very strong showing in the Northeast and that she would take Florida in a close race. FiveThirtyEight had Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, and Michigan going blue as they traditionally do.
WorstElectionEver’s Forecast
We seem to be the only poll that actually predicted the outcome. While we were wrong on California, Oregon, and Washington we did accurately predict Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Florida. When we saw our results start to pour in and compared them to the polls being published by the media we thought that something must be wrong, so we widened our net a little and tried to focus on bringing in some traffic from blue sources, but the outcome remained the same.
What Does it Mean?
Other than reinforcing our perfect self-image this election has exposed some pretty deep flaws in the way that polls operate. As technology moves forward and people engage with one another in different ways it becomes harder and harder to get an accurate sample using old polling methods. On top of sampling error, this election was extremely divisive causing many potential Trump voters to hide their choice from friends and family in order to prevent political arguments. While we can poke fun at FiveThirtyEight this time, we have a great deal of respect for their intellectual honesty and couldn’t wrap this up without recommending that you read their election post mortem: Why FiveThirtyEight Gave Trump A Better Chance Than Almost Anyone Else.
While WorstElectionEver.com was always a tongue-in-cheek comparison of the two major candidates and focused on the worst, we hope that the country can now come together and make the best of the situation.
