Do polls actually predict election results?

Yes. I mean...no.

This video might possibly drive you crazy. I know it drove me crazy researching it.

Produced by Matt Beat.

Sources/further reading:
https://theweek.com/politics/2024-election-polls-accuracy
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/08/28/key-things-to-know-about-us-election-polling-in-2024/
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2016/09/08/understanding-the-margin-of-error-in-election-polls/
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/why-was-the-national-polling-environment-so-off-in-2020/
https://www.statisticshowto.com/probability-and-statistics/hypothesis-testing/margin-of-error/
https://corporatefinanceinstitute.com/resources/data-science/non-sampling-error/

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Hey man, got any of that SAWEET polling data? I need me some more delicious polling data. GIVE IT TO ME.

Wait a second, does polling actually predict election results?

Most of the time, yes. Actually. But while polls may give us a GENERAL picture of who will win, they are much less accurate predicting by how much. For example, they generally predicted Joe Biden would win the 2020 presidential election, but they were about 4 percentage points off.

It’s not surprising that polls wouldn’t be completely accurate because any time we conduct polls there’s a margin of error, the range of values below and above a sample statistic to let us know how much a poll could be wrong. Since it’s nearly impossible to poll EVERY SINGLE VOTER before an election, EVERY poll has a sampling error. But there are also non-sampling errors because stuff just goes wrong, man. (list them on screen)

So what does that mean for the upcoming 2024 election? Well, based on polls, it could be extremely close or a landslide victory for Trump or Harris. Oh no.