Polling was terrible again. It isn't going anywhere.

The 538 logo.
(Image credit: Illustrated | iStock, Fivethirtyeight)

The presidential votes are still being counted in many states, and so far Joe Biden has a substantial lead in the popular vote and is narrowly ahead in the states necessary to win the Electoral College. That makes for a sharp contrast with the pre-election polling averages, which had Biden far ahead nationally and ahead in almost every swing state.

We will have to wait until all the votes are counted to see how bad the mistake was precisely, but at time of writing the FiveThirtyEight polling average was off in Ohio by about 8 percentage points, in Florida by about 5 points, and in Texas by about 4 points. Other states are still being counted, but similar errors look likely in many of them. The mistake looks considerably worse than the miss in 2016, and very possibly the worst one since the infamous "Dewey Defeats Truman" whiff in 1948.

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Ryan Cooper

Ryan Cooper is a national correspondent at TheWeek.com. His work has appeared in the Washington Monthly, The New Republic, and the Washington Post.