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.