Happy Election Day -300!
Polls are now officially not totally useless at historical election prediction (this is not a guarantee for the future)
I have seen enough social media posts about poll toplines, crosstabs, and averages this week that, if I had just woken up from a coma, I’d think it were November. In fact, it is only January 10th! There are no elections today! There is a Republican presidential primary debate between Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley — which is why I’m up late and blogging to fill the time — and Iowa is next week, but there are no elections today.
Nevertheless, today is special to a small crowd of the poll-obsessed journalists and political scientists who recognize the following chart:
The chart is from political scientists Robert Erikson and Christopher Wlezien’s 2012 book The Timeline of Presidential Elections, which looks at how, when and why voters make their decisions about who to vote for. The chart shows you how predictive horse race polls are of actual election outcomes between 1956 and 2008.1 Here’s how to read it: On the left, we’re at 300 days before the election, when polls are of little to no pr…
