No, just going by the results. When the polls show the correct winner in 34 out of 35 senate races, would you call that inaccurate? When the polls show the correct winner in 425 out of 435 house races, would you call that inaccurate? When the polls come within 0.3 of a single point on the popular vote, would you call that inaccurate? I wouldn’t. I’d say most polls were correct. Let the political talking heads talk all they want about inaccurate polls. But did they tell you what was inaccurate about them? Did they tell you how many races the got wrong vs. how many the polls were right? I highly doubt it. The numbers speak for themselves.
538, Cook, Rothenberg, Sabato, EP, Inside edition, Split ticket, Elections Daily, YouGov, Trafalgar, and more always have an internal or in perhaps this case, an external review in asking themselves what they got right, what they got wrong, how can they improve themselves, did they over represent republicans, democrats, under represent independents, someone else? They always go through an extensive inside review after every election. They don’t sit on their laurels. Each and everyone of them must go through a review, looking at changes in demographics, those who voted and didn’t vote, changes in party affiliation, which group or faction or demographic, age, sex, etc. of voters were more apt to vote and which were not. Normal SOP going on here.
Don’t get prognosticators, predictors, pundit confused with pollsters which seems to be what is happening. In 2016, Trump supporters holler from the roof tops the polls were wrong, they still do. But were they? The poll predicted Clinton would win the popular vote by 3.3 points, she won it by 2.1 points. Well within the margin of error of plus or minus 3 points. The important thing is the polls predicted Clinton would win the popular vote, she did. As for states, the polls got Wisconsin wrong, the late polls had Trump winning Pennsylvania and Michigan although the pundits, talking heads ignored the late polls and still predicted a Clinton win in all 3 of those states. The polls, the late polls taken within a day or two of the election got 49 out of 50 states correct. Yet, because the pundits predicted a Hillary Clinton victory, the polls were wrong, inaccurate. Bottom line, it wasn’t the polls, it was the predictors, the talking heads, the prognosticators who got it wrong. Perhaps going by their hearts, not the cold hard numbers.
Me, I look at the final results, compare them to the polls, not the talking heads or pundit’s prediction and decide for myself about whether or not the polls were accurate or not. I think they were. Of course, that just me. I think the final results show the polls were right on, perhaps their predictions were wrong. But maybe they weren’t. I didn’t see a single pundit, predictor stating the Democrats would retain control of the house. I did see four or five out of perhaps 15 say the republicans would regain control of the senate. They didn’t. 2/3rds predicted the Democrats would retain control of the senate.
Very long winded here, I go by the polling numbers, not the pundit or talking head forecasts. Look at the polling numbers, the late polls, not the early polls which I ignore vs. the final results, make up your own mind. If you still think the polls were wrong, fine, so be it. Join the Trumpers from 2016. They used that mantra of the polls being wrong to say Trump would win in 2020.
