Polls predicted Clinton would win, but Trump proved the victor

Donald Trump's victory in the 2016 presidential elections has left some Americans confused, due to the fact that many polls showed that Hillary Clinton would be the winner. Fairleigh Dickinson University's

News 12 Staff

Nov 10, 2016, 9:03 AM

Updated 2,859 days ago

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Donald Trump's victory in the 2016 presidential elections has left some Americans confused, due to the fact that many polls showed that Hillary Clinton would be the winner.
Fairleigh Dickinson University's Public Mind poll is one of New Jersey's biggest polling groups. Prof. Peter Wooley, the group's founder, says that polls only predict what could happen, not what actually happens in the voting booth.
"We're really reporting not on voters, but on likely voters, which means we're saying something about the motivation of everyone in our target," he says. "Now that's a moving target."
The FDU polls got it right for New Jersey. The Garden State went for Clinton. For other states like Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, the polls were wrong.
Research at FDU has shown that male voters can change their mind easily, and that this first ever election between a woman and man had a major impact.
"We know it's harder and harder to get to people in a random fashion that we need to in order to conduct an interview," Wooley says.
Democrats banking on certain states for Clinton were disappointed when they went for Trump. Polls failed to predict that exposing systemic errors. But the margins were not enormous, putting polls in the ballpark even if they were wrong.
Wooley says that the new modern age of communication has also made it difficult to get real substantial time to interview some voters.