Stephanie Slade: Polls Did Better at Predicting Support for Libertarians Than Democrats

One of the big questions going in to Tuesday
night was whether public opinion polls would prove accurate at
predicting the vote share received by third-party candidates like
Virginia Libertarian Rob Sarvis. Most of the votes have now been
tabulated, so how did pollsters do?

In fact, they missed by far larger margins when it came to
predicting Democratic support than support for third parties,
explains Reason’s Stephanie Slade. Sure, polls
overstated support for candidates like Sarvis and Florida
gubernatorial hopeful Adrian Wyllie, but the errors were relatively
small. Yet in state after state, polls significantly overstated
Democratic support.

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