Press Play with Madeleine Brand
The Limits of Political Polls
The political story of the week is the stunning defeat of House majority leader Eric Cantor in Virginia’s seventh district. Nobody predicted that Cantor would lose to a no-name, Tea Party-backed economics professor -- least of all, Cantor’s pollster, John McLaughlin.
By Barbara Bogaev • • 1 min readThe political story of the week is the stunning defeat of House majority leader Eric Cantor in Virginia’s seventh district. Nobody predicted that Cantor would lose to a no-name, Tea Party-backed economics professor -- least of all, Cantor’s pollster, John McLaughlin. Less than a week before the election, McLaughlin forecasted that Cantor would win by 34 percentage points. Instead, he lost by ten. How did the pollster get it so wrong?
