Why sociologists were mistaken in the results of presidential elections

The victory of Donald Trump in the presidential election questioned the mathematical methods and forms of polls that American sociologists and leading publications use to determine voters' preferences before the elections. For almost the entire election campaign, they predicted a victory for Hillary Clinton, and the result was completely opposite.

This even served as a reason for a comic collage from “Jellyfish".

What went wrong, and why sociologists made a mistake, understood the publication USA Today.

One of the reasons could be that polling sociologists underestimated the potential of Trump's hidden supporters, who did not want to publicly declare their political views, but voted for the Republican at the elections.

The only poll that predicted Trump's victory in the last months before the election was the Los Angeles Times and the University of Southern California. Its organizers say that they were saved from an error by using an anonymous form of polling via the Internet, when people were not afraid to declare their sympathy for a candidate with whose name many scandals were associated. In a personal conversation with the interviewer, they were simply embarrassed to admit it, thereby distorting the survey data.

In addition, many pollsters have not taken into account the fact that many of those who did not vote in the 2012 election will vote in this election, and they most likely voted for Trump, since not voting is a form of protest against the traditional system, and Trump positioned himself precisely as a fighter against the system.

Professor Michael Traugot of the University of Michigan believes that voter turnout was a bad joke with Clinton, which was less than the predicted 5 million, and according to sociologists, most of those who did not vote belonged to the camp of the Democrats, which, of course, reduced Clinton’s expected result.

In addition, he noted that the scandal fueled with new force around the Clinton mail on the eve of the elections could affect the sympathies of voters, but it did not have time to be reflected in the polls.

There could also be problems with conducting polls in some states where this process is complicated, or sociologists have incorrectly estimated the ratio of white voters to ethnic minorities. In addition, we should not forget that in recent months, the gap between candidates, according to surveys, was minimal, and in this case the role of statistical error cannot be excluded.

In any case, the scientists intend to conduct a post-election study to understand what caused the errors in the forecasts.

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