Thursday, April 7, 2016

More Abramson on the Democratic race

Following up on this post, here's another Abramson article on how the Democratic race has shifted in March. Excerpts:

"The Democratic primary race changed fundamentally — indeed, radically — after March 1st, and the national media’s failure to register this and work it into their polling, projections, and punditry is one of the most wide-ranging, public, and ultimately influential journalistic failures of the last decade. In short, it’s the reason supporters of Bernie Sanders have been tearing their hair out reading national media coverage that reports, and glibly, that the Democratic primary race is effectively over."


"And for those wondering how much weight to give the predictive powers of this columnist, consider this: FiveThirtyEight.com predicted Sanders would win Alaska by 8, Hawaii by 8, and Washington by 17. I predicted Sanders would win each of these states by “between 35 and 50 points.” Sanders won Alaska by 63.2 points, Hawaii by 39.8, and Washington by 45.6. FiveThirtyEight.com predicted Clinton would win Illinois by 10 and North Carolina by 12; I said that these predictions were missing late polling data suggesting a momentum shift for Sanders — and indeed Illinois was decided by only 1.8 percent and Clinton only beat Sanders on Election day in North Carolina by 52 percent to 48 percent.
"The projections I made were based on the fact that something fundamental changed in the Democratic primary race after March 1st. The national media would do well to acknowledge this also and start asking what it means for the next two and a half months of Democratic primaries and caucuses."

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