How the Polls Performed

Many people have lamented the bad polling in the primaries for both parties this year. I am counted among those. Where I differed is that many who believed that polling had proved to be wrong were of the believe that Donald Trump had severely been under represented in the polls (in other words that his actual number in the primaries were much higher than what the polling suggested).

While the polling hasn't been great I have gone back and looked at 32 states that had enough polling to be able to test this theory. My pre-requisite for including a state in the testing what that the state had done at least one poll since the start of 2016 and within two weeks of that state's primary or caucus.

This left the states and territories following off the list:

Alaska

Minnesota

Vermont

Maine

Puerto Rico

Hawaii

US Virgin Islands

Washington D.C.

Guam

Northern Marianas

American Samoa

North Dakota

Wyoming

Colorado

I also have excluded polling from the most recent primaries in West Virginia and Nebraska as Trump is the only one left in the race.

The way in which I assigned how the averages of the polls did in each state was in three categories; over polled(with the addition of slight/very over polled), even, and under polled (with the addition of slight/very under polled).

If the polling averages were 2% or better I marked them as even.

If the polling averages were between 3-4% I marked them as slightly over/under.

If the polling averages were between 5% I marked them as over/under.

If the polling averages were over 7% I marked them as very over/under.

DONALD TRUMP:

What I found among the 32 races I did test show that Donald Trump's performed worse than his poll numbers in 9 races. Of those races he performed slightly worse in three states and very worse in one race, Kansas, where he was polling at 35% and actually only garnered 23%

He performed better than the polls in 11 states. In two states he performed slightly better than the polls indicated and also performed way better in two states. In those two states, Arizona and Pennsylvania, he garnered 10% and 8% better than the average had indicated.

Here's the catch, he performed within the 2% mark meaning the polls essentially got the data right in 12 of the states.

TED CRUZ:

You may be shocked at the outcomes in regards to Ted Cruz. For all the talk that the polls had under polled Trump, Cruz was actually the victim much more.

Let us look at the over performances first. Of the 32 states I looked at Cruz did worse than the polls in five states. Of those five two states were marked as slightly over polled.

Ted Cruz performed better than the polling indicated in 21 of the 32 states. Among the 21 he had 6 slightly better performances and a whopping 11 states where he performed much better than the polls indicated. Of those 11 states on 2 of his performances improved by less than 10% over the polls. In Idaho the polls had him at 19%, yet he won with 45%.

He performed about how the polls said he would in eight states.

JOHN KASICH:

Kasich has gotten a reputation for being Mr. Consistent. His polling averages are no different.

Only five states predicted that he would do better than he actually did with two of those slightly over polling Kasich.

He performed better in only 6 states. Of those six he was slightly better in two states and much better in two as well.

He performed about how the polls predicted in 11 states, which is a huge indicator of why he never had much of a chance outside of Ohio.

To sum of the numbers Trump did better or worse than the polls in 21 of the 32 states, Cruz did better or worse in 24 of the 32 states, and Kasich did better or worse in 11 of the 32 states.

While the bottom of the polls performed about where they were expected the top of the polls was very fluid. Overall, the polls performed much better than I had previously thought and while Trump did have more states that he performed better than worse, he had more states that he essentially equaled what the polls were saying, which is the exact opposite of what the media has been portraying.

Ted Cruz was actually the candidate on the Republican side that was outperforming the polls. However, since the media was all about Trump and how he was doing "better than expected" Cruz could not turn a lot of those into wins.