(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . The Pundits and Pollsters Predicted, and So Did You - How'd We All Do? [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2024-11-24 It will be a long time before everything that happened in the 2024 election can be properly analyzed. Prior to this election, I put out tracking the polls and forecasts from numerous political sites. The last pre-election diary, from November 3rd, is here. Now almost all the votes are tallied up, if not yet certified, and so we can step back and at least take a look at how the polling aggregators and forecasters and political pundits did. And you, the DKos community, as well — I posted a number of surveys with my diaries for folks to enter their own predictions. I will disclose up front that I was way too optimistic in my own assessment, and that’s just my hopeful personality — I had data points to back it up, but failed to appreciate just how much, every time Trump is on the ballot, millions of infrequent (or never) voters show up just to vote for him. And to give a big F-you to America and in favor of burning everything down, but that’s for another diary. There is, it seems, a malignant fake-populist appeal of a narcissistic sociopath like Trump to a significant chunk of America. So — here we go. The sites I tracked up to the election included: 270 to Win (270) 538 Cook Political Report The Economist (Econ) Electoral-vote.com (E-V) Inside Elections JHK Forecasts (JHK) Princeton Election Consortium (PEC) Race to the WH (RWH) RealClearPolitics (RCP) Sabato's Crystal Ball Split Ticket (ST) Washington Post (WP) President: How they did Here’s the final pre-election forecasts that I posted. It was all about the seven swing states, again, so that’s what I tracked all along. I’m not going to address numeric polling margins, just who got which states. A “tie” rating is counted as half credit, given how numerically close all the polling was. State averages/forecasts (as published on November 3rd): State RWH ST WP E-V 538 270 ECON JHK RCP WI D +0.6 D +1.4 D +2 D +4 D +0.9 D +1 D +1 D +0.9 D +0.1 MI D +1.5 D +2 D +3 D +1 D +1.3 D +1.7 D +1 D +1.6 D +0.6 PA D +0.0 D +0.6 D <1 Tie R +0.1 R +0.1 Tie Tie R +0.4 NC R +1.6 R +1.7 R +1 R +1 R +1.3 R +1.5 R +1 R +1.9 R +1.7 GA R +1.3 R +1.6 R +2 R +1 R +1.5 R +1.4 R +1 R +1.7 R +2.6 AZ R +1.5 R +2.1 R +2 D +1 R +1.9 R +1.4 R +2 R +2.1 R +2.7 NV R +0.2 R +0 D <1 Tie R +0.1 R +0.7 Tie R +0.3 R +1.7 Note that nobody got Michigan or Wisconsin right — even the most right-leaning of the sites, RealClearPolitics (RCP), had Harris up in the final polling averages. Winners: A 3-way tie between 538, 270 to Win, and RCP, all of whom had the remaining 5 swing states going Republican. Second place: JHK Forecasts with 4½ — Calling PA a tie while correctly getting the remaining 4. Third place: Race to the White House, Split Ticket, and the Economist, at 4 points each. Last place: Washington Post and Electoral-vote.com, with only 3 points each. The pundit sites I also tracked — Sabato’s Crystal Ball, the Cook Political Report, and Inside Elections — all went into the elections with projected electoral counts of 226 for Harris and 219 for Trump as a baseline, and the swing states all as toss-ups with 93 cumulative EVs. So in one sense they got it right — Harris did get 226 electoral votes, while all the swing states swung together, unfortunately in the wrong direction. President: How you did I also surveyed my readers about their predictions, with poll options ranging from an Obama-level victory for Harris to a Trump win in both the electoral and popular vote. Somewhere in the DKos community, 2 people (out of 123 voting) correctly predicted what was about to happen: in my poll for the 11/3 diary, they selected “Trump wins the electoral vote and the popular vote.” Another 5% (6 more) predicted a Trump electoral vote win. So that’s 8 out of 123. Congratulations — I guess. You didn’t get caught up in the optimism/euphoria and saw what was coming. But of course, we all lost. For myself, I wrote that two outcomes seemed possible: that Harris would sweep the swing states and win convincingly (which I said was the most likely) or that the polls were roughly correct and election night would be a nail-biter, with the outcome very close. I’ll give myself 1/3 of a point for this one; it was very close, and I was biting my nails. Senate: How They Did Just prior to the election, every site I was tracking had R wins forecast in Montana, Texas (which just can’t break up with Ted Cruz), and Nebraska (where it looked for a while like the independent candidate Osborn was giving the Rs a scare). So we’ll look only at the Senate races in the 5 swing states that had one, plus Ohio. Note that no one got Ohio and Pennsylvania right; even the right-leaning RCP had Brown with a small polling lead and Casey more comfortably ahead. Senate Averages/Forecasts (as published on November 3rd): State RWH ST E-V Econ 270 JHK PEC RCP Sabato Cook WI D +2.5 D +2.6 D +3 D +4 D +1.8 D +2.8 D +1.0 D +0.9 Lean D Tossup MI D +4.7 D +4.2 D +5 D +4 D +4.0 D +4.5 D +2.4 D +3.5 Lean D Tossup OH D +1.2 D +0.2 D +1 D +1 D +1.0 D +1.1 D +0.8 D +1.0 Tossup Tossup PA D +4.3 D +3.3 D +3 D +4 D +2.5 D +3.5 D +2.5 D +2.4 Lean D Tossup AZ D +6.1 D +5.5 D +7 D +7 D +5.5 D +5.5 D +4.0 D +3.9 Lean D Lean D NV D +5.7 D +5.4 D +7 D +7 D +4.1 D +5.9 D +2.9 D +4.3 Lean D Lean D The actual results were 4 Democratic wins and 2 Republican (Ohio and Pennsylvania), for a 53-47 R-controlled Senate. The sites tracked offered polling averages or predictions of the numerical seat count, or both. We’ll count “tossups” as a half-point, as we did for the Presidential race. Winner: Sabato, who was the only one to call the OH race a tossup while correctly calling all the D wins (4.5 out of 6). Second Place: Everyone else except Cook; they all score 4 out of 6. Last Place: Cook, who technically also got 4 points (2 D wins and 4 toss-ups), but who still gets a special penalty from me for playing it safe with too many tossups. For the numerical balance in the Senate, 270toWin was closest, calling for D 47, R 52 with Ohio as a tossup. Every other site I was tracking put the Democrats at 48 or 49 seats, so they correctly predicted R control. Senate: How You Did In my 9/8 diary, I polled readers about their prediction for the number of Democratic seats in the new Senate. Of 292 votes, 4% were for 48 or less (the lowest possible choice). Another 20%, though, went for 49 and so correctly predicted a Republican-controlled Senate. So, about 70 of you got it. My own final prediction was 50 or 51 Democratic seats. Way off. House: How They Did Almost none of the sites had a firm prediction about party control. Last place goes to Race to the WH, which was the only one to predict D control at 222-213. The rest leaned slightly towards one party or the other, but with too many seats rated as toss-ups to assign a winner. For my purposes, I’m assigning half the toss-up seats to each party and seeing who comes the closest to our current count: R 221- D 214, assuming the last two uncalled races (in California) go to the current leader. First place goes to — RealClearPolitics, which forecast R 201 and D 192 with 42 tossups, resulting in R 222 — D 213. House: How You Did In my 9/22 diary, I polled readers about their House predictions. Of 194 votes, 7% (14 of you) predicted R control. There’s a lot of work to do for 2026 and 2028, and I thank everyone who read my series and wish all of you the best under the new administration, which will doubtless serve up an endless array of cruel and stupid policies, leavened by a dose of incompetence and infighting. 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