Wait?!?! How Were the Polls This Far Off?

Having discussed the results and prediction markets, let me address a different question I saw brought up last night. If the polls have been this wildly off in Wisconsin and Michigan, how can we be confident that Democrats are set for a banner showing in November?

The best answer to this is that you shouldn’t be confident, or, at the very least, certain of anything. But the comparison is mostly apples to oranges. Midterm elections are fairly high turnout affairs and we have lots of historical data about turnout patterns. So the composition of the electorate is fairly predictable. Fairly. Primaries are quite different. It’s a bit like saying you have a hundred kids who are going to be in the school lunch room — a table with the jocks, one with the nerds, one each for the goths (dating myself), the richies and the stoners — and they’re going to vote for student body president. But now let’s say only 20 students are going to show up. It’s a very different result if it’s the goths and nerds who show up vs. the jocks and the richies.