Sunday, February 21, 2016

In the South Carolina GOP primary the polling averaged a miss of 16.1% v 14.2% in New Hampshire

The Real Clear Politics poll average predicted the lineup of the outcome in South Carolina, but the percentage of the vote received was off on average by 16.1%, with the polls getting it most wrong about Jeb Bush who underperformed predictions by 37.2%. The polling was most accurate for Trump, who outperformed the predicted result by only 2.2%.

Trump 31.8% v 32.5% actual = outperformed polling by 2.2%
Rubio 18.8% v 22.5% actual = outperformed polling by 16.4%
Cruz 18.5% v 22.3% actual = outperformed polling by 17%
Bush 10.7% v 7.8% actual = underperformed polling by 37.2%
Kasich 9.0% v 7.6% actual = underperformed polling by 18.4%
Carson 6.8% v 7.2% actual = outperformed polling by 5.6%

Average variance of actual result from polling in South Carolina = 16.1%, 13% worse than in New Hampshire. On the other hand, polling in New Hampshire did not predict the lineup of the result as it did in South Carolina, except for Trump who came in first and Chris Christie who came in sixth as predicted by the polls there.

It looks like the polling in South Carolina for establishment candidates Bush and Kasich has been especially expressive of wishful thinking, since both have fallen far short of expectations.

It was bad enough that Bush has already dropped out, and rather ignominiously. A falloff in donations to Bush has been said to be an important reason why he decided to quit at this still early stage, which just goes to show what a spendthrift the richest guy in the campaign next to Trump has been. He would have been a bad president for government spending too.