'It Is Brexit...The Polls Again Were Wrong'
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FORT WORTH (CBSDFW.COM/AP) - On election night Dallas attorney and Democratic activist Domingo Garcia said on CBSDFW Facebook Live, "Nobody predicted it. It is Brexit."
Garcia was referencing Britain's vote in June to leave the 28-nation European Union. Prior to that vote, polls there had shown that it was not likely to happen.
Garcia continued, "The polls are totally off. They undercounted Trump support, especially there in the Midwest, and I think that's going to be the story tomorrow. The polls again were wrong."
Lt. Col. Allen West said that by contrast the results of many online polls were often different. "It's interesting because when you do the online polling when people's identities are more (anonymous) you get a completely different aspect of this," said West.
On Monday, Donald Trump referenced Brexit as well during a campaign rally where he urged his supporters to get out and vote.
"We are going to have one of the great victories of all time," he said, comparing the U.S. election to the "Brexit" vote by the United Kingdom to leave the European Union "times 50."
According to RealClearPolitics.com, what happened in England was not so much about bad polling rather a "failure of prognostication." In an article about what happened in 'Brexit' for that web site Sean Trende said, "Betting markets showed 'Remain' as a heavy favorite. Most columnists thought 'Leave' would lose. Even analysts looked at the data and came up with rationales as to why 'Remain' would emerge victorious."
He continued, "The problem, in retrospect, was that the socioeconomic class to which columnists, analysts, and speculators in political markets belonged had a heavy 'pro-Remain' tilt to it. This infiltrated their analysis, as the supposedly objective measurements that they chose turned out to be massive exercises in confirmation bias."
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