{"id":119241,"date":"2016-11-10T09:51:28","date_gmt":"2016-11-10T14:51:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu?p=119241&preview=true&preview_id=119241"},"modified":"2016-11-10T14:58:51","modified_gmt":"2016-11-10T19:58:51","slug":"polling-process-produced-flawed-election-predictions-experts-say","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2016\/11\/polling-process-produced-flawed-election-predictions-experts-say\/","title":{"rendered":"Polling Process Produced Flawed Election Predictions, Experts Say"},"content":{"rendered":"

Breakdowns in polling accuracy due to their design and the influence of technology were among the factors that turned what polls indicated would be a victory into a loss for the former Secretary of State and U.S. senator in the 2016 U.S. Presidential election, say UConn experts.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a>
Political science professor Sam Best speaks on a panel discussing the results of Election 2016 during a forum at the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center on Nov. 9. (Sean Flynn\/UConn Photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The day after the election, UConn political science and public policy faculty analyzed Donald Trump\u2019s victory over Hillary Clinton during a forum at the Thomas J. Dodd Center for Research.<\/p>\n

Panelist Samuel Best, professor of political science, who studies public opinion and political behavior, said variations in how polls are developed, such as taking into account how voters behaved in the last election cycle, appear to have had a greater effect on accuracy in this election.<\/p>\n

\u201cFraming your likely voter based on the 2012 election cycle could be pretty problematic,\u201d said Best, noting that most Trump voters did not vote in the last election cycle.<\/p>\n

Another factor affecting polls is the disappearance of landline telephones, which used to provide accurate information on where voters lived and would cast their votes. Most such telephones have been replaced by mobile phones with exchanges or area codes that could reflect owners’ previous voting districts. \u201cCell phones have produced enormous challenges in determining geography and location,\u201d Best said.<\/p>\n

There were a number of polls looking at the popular vote that had it within the margin, noted Jennifer Dineen, program director in the Graduate Program in Survey Research in the Department of Public Policy, and one of the panelists. Those had Clinton up by two points in the popular vote, in which the outcome looks closer to about point seven. But there were also states like Wisconsin and Michigan in which polls were way off, and those states were critical to the election outcome, she added.<\/p>\n

\u201cPolls did not have a good night, but they all were not all as wrong as will be discussed,\u201d said Dineen. \u201cPolling is an estimate, it\u2019s an interval.”<\/p>\n

In addition to Dineen and Best, panelists included Paul Herrnson, professor of political science who teaches courses on Congressional elections and other aspects of American politics; and Evelyn Simien, associate professor of political science and a specialist in African American politics, public opinion, and political behavior. Thomas Hayes, an assistant professor of political science who specializes in the fields of American politics and political behavior, served as moderator.<\/p>\n

They noted additional factors influencing voter behavior this election, notably miscalculations in racial and gender politics and in the depth of support for the candidates:<\/p>\n

\u2022 Exit polls found that most voters knew who they would support going into the final weeks of the campaign.
\n\u2022 Half of voters said they were not bothered by Trump\u2019s comments about Latinos, women, immigrants, and other candidates.
\n\u2022 Trump\u2019s use of \u201csymbolic language,\u201d such as using nicknames to describe his campaign opponents \u2013 \u201cCorrupt Hillary,\u201d \u201cLying Ted (Cruz),\u201d and \u201cLittle Marco (Rubio)\u201d \u2013 helped undermine their important appeal to voters.
\n\u2022 Latino voters did not support Clinton as well as they did President Barack Obama in the 2012 election campaign.
\n\u2022 Despite being the first woman to be a party\u2019s major candidate for President, Clinton did not energize the electorate as Obama did as the first African-American major party candidate.<\/p>\n

Simien said political scientists have not fully considered race, gender, class, and age as variables that ultimately dictate the outcome of elections in the United States. She noted that in the run-up to the election the media reported on Trump\u2019s harsh rhetoric.<\/p>\n

\u201cPost-election, there is some radio silence because of this unexpected outcome,\u201d she said. \u201cWhat gets lost in the conversation is the role that gender played. Instead we focus on his economic message as it’s appealing to white, blue color, working-class Americans. You cannot divorce that demographic and their racial attitude and their gender attitude from their voting behavior. Post-election, some political scientists\u00a0\u2013 not enough, far too few\u00a0\u2013 will study those attitudes. Did gender or attitudes toward race influence voting behavior and determine this electoral outcome?\u201d<\/p>\n

Best said Clinton\u2019s favorability ratings from her time as Secretary of State in the Obama Administration slipped steadily over the past four years, raising the question of whether the nation is ready for a female commander in chief.<\/p>\n

Clinton had a nearly 60 percent favorability rating a year after the 2012 attacks against two U.S. government facilities in Benghazi, Libya, according to Best. But, after she announced her candidacy for the White House, her rating soon dropped 12 points, during a time when she was nearly unopposed by other candidates.<\/p>\n

\u201cHow come they\u2019re dropping before Donald Trump, Bernie Sanders, or anyone is making any comments whatsoever?\u201d Best asked. \u201cI think it speaks to how uncomfortable we are about a woman running for president. We can see that in the exit polls as well.\u201d<\/p>\n

As to the challenges facing the president-elect, Herrnson said Trump will need to build unity among Republicans in office, including those he battled during the primary campaign and party leaders who may have kept their distance during the campaign, as well as trying to reach across the aisle to Democrats.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think he might find a receptive audience for some things among Democrats recently elected or those in the Senate who are up for election in the next cycle,\u201d Herrnson said. \u201cIt will be an interesting situation in the upcoming Congress. Besides realignment, there will be pressure to change the [presidential] nomination rules, but many of the issues Democrats have championed won\u2019t get very far and, of course, with Supreme Court nominations, we\u2019ll see more conservative justices.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The disappearance of landline phones, which provided information on where voters lived, was one of the factors affecting the accuracy of the polls, UConn experts said. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":119259,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2226,2225],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[1918],"class_list":["post-119241","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-clas","category-uconn-storrs"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-10 16:30:57","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119241","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=119241"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119241\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":119314,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119241\/revisions\/119314"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/119259"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=119241"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=119241"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=119241"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=119241"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=119241"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}