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Vote Counting in Florida Primaries (March 2020)
Photo: MARK WALLHEISER / AFP
Take Wisconsin.
In the last few days leading up to the 2016 presidential election, Hillary Clinton was quite clearly ahead of Donald Trump in polls.
FiveThirtyEight's data analysts predicted the Democrat's lead in the state by 5.3 percentage points.
In the end, Trump won by less than a point.
The misjudgments from four years ago shook the pollsters industry, one researched feverishly for the causes.
In Wisconsin, it was answered, simply not enough quality surveys had been conducted.
That year all changed. Some of America's most respected pollsters went to work in the voting swing state;
the Washington Post and ABC conducted their poll, one of the most prestigious in the country.
The result was even worse than 2016.
In the average determined by FiveThirtyEight, Biden was more than eight percentage points ahead of Trump.
The Democrat eventually won with less than one.
The poll by the Washington Post and ABC, which is considered the gold standard in the industry, saw Biden even ahead with 17 points a week before the election, the most glaring misjudgment of the entire election cycle.
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