News
Greg Evans
Nov 17, 2020
EDGARD GARRIDO/Reuters
While many have celebrated the election of Joe Biden, it wasn't quite the margin of victory that some polls had predicted.
In the lead up to election day, some pollsters were predicting a major landslide for Biden, where he could even take back states like Florida and Texas.
That didn't turn out to be the case, as although Biden managed to flip several key states, which gave him a path to victory, Trump vastly overperformed against some expert's expectations.
It wasn't quite the polling error that was seen in the 2016 election, where Hillary Clinton was projected to win, only for her to lose thanks to the electoral college system, but it has still caused many to doubt the accuracy of modern-day polls.
Nate Silver, editor-in-chief of FiveThirtyEight, is one of the most notable pollsters in the United States and he recently attempted to defend the polls.
In a tweet posted on 10 November he asked people to accept that the polls aren't less accurate but that there is now more uncertainty on the issue.
This prompted some criticism from MSNBC host Chris Hayes, who said that polls becoming more accessible but also less accurate is a 'bad combination.'
Silver replied by stating that there is not much evidence to support that polls are becoming less accurate and had one of their best years at the 2018 midterms.
That all seems fair enough, after all, Silver is an expert in this field. Now, bear in mind this initial conversation took place on 10 November.
Five days later, Donald Trump Jr decided to wade in and attempted to mock Silver for 'trying to salvage' his 'very lucrative career in polling punditry.'
This unwarranted mockery from Trump Jr saw him get his just desserts as Silver replied with a scathing comeback about his father's now limited time left in the White House.
As you can imagine, this produced equal amounts of hilarity from critics of Trump and scorn from supporters of the president so we'll leave it at that.
At the time of writing, the president has let to concede power or congratulate Biden on his win.
Trump, however, has not cricitised the polls so much, as he was always trailing Biden but one of the main reasons for him refusing to recognise the results is that it was called by the media, which is something that has always happened in US elections.
He and his team have also been pushing baseless accusations of electoral fraud but have so far been unable to provide any substantial evidence.
More: In declaring a ‘win’, Donald Trump is working towards a complete autocracy
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