By the end of a presidential race, as many as thirty or forty polls might be released every day from different states, and some of these results will inevitably fall outside the margin of error. Candidates, strategists, and television commentators—who have some vested interest in making the race seem closer than it really is—might focus on these outlier polls, but the FiveThirtyEight model found that they usually didn’t make much difference. Ultimately, the right attitude is that you should make the best forecast possible today—regardless of what you said last week, last month, or last year.
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