[mandolingual]

From what I recall the main narrative was "it's neck and neck but we could be a single polling misstep from a blowout in either direction" which is about as safe a stance as you can take (understandable considering the blowback they got previously).

[PaulHoule]

More to the point the polls do not predict who wins the election because the election is won by the electoral college, not by the popular vote. Even if you got the popular vote exact you still couldn't predict the election accurately.

What you have to do is simulate all the states and DC and run a monte carlo simulation and you will always get an equivocal answer if you do that.

[JumpCrisscross]

> polls do not predict who wins the election because the election is won by the electoral college, not by the popular vote

Which is why any model worth its salt only uses national polls to predict state results. (State polls are more meaningful. But the headlines they generate aren't as nationally clickable.)

[PaulHoule]

Unfortunately there are too many states and not enough polls to make a model based on state-level polls so you have to infer state-level results based on something other than state-level polls.

[JumpCrisscross]

> there are too many states and not enough polls to make a model based on state-level polls

There aren’t that may states. You don’t need partisan polling in Vermont and Wyoming, for example.

> you have to infer state-level results based on something other than state-level polls

Yes. As I said. That is what you use national polls. “But the electoral college” isn’t a valid argument against election models. The reality is paucity of granular data and complexity of predicting swing states.