With the majority of polls wrongly predicting that Democrat Hillary Clinton would win the presidency four years ago, changes have been made ahead of next week's election in the name of accuracy.
According to CBS News, national polls largely had it right, and Clinton ended up winning the popular vote. But President Donald Trump notched victories in several swing states and ultimately earned 304 electoral votes — enough to put him in the White House.
What happened in 2016, CBS noted, was that state polls were inaccurate. More specifically, white men without a college degree came out in droves to vote for Trump, which many polls missed.
This time around, pollsters are taking a slightly different approach.
For one, they're conducting more polls — according to The Washington Post, RealClearPolitics is watching nearly twice the number of polls as it did four years ago in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Arizona.
Another change, the Post noted, is that more polls are taking into consideration voters' educational status.
RealClearPolitics currently shows Democrat Joe Biden leading Trump by an average of 7.5 percentage points. Some prognosticators have predicted that the former vice president will win handily, while others say the election will be tight and could even swing toward Trump.
One of the most accurate surveys in the 2016 election, the Investor's Business Daily/TIPP poll, recently found that Biden's lead is just 5 points — less than 2 points outside the margin of error.
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