Why Did The Polls Get it Wrong (Or Did They)?
The Inquiry
BBC
4.6 • 1.7K Ratings
🗓️ 29 November 2016
⏱️ 23 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Hillary Clinton lost the US election despite some polls putting her chances of winning at 99%.
In the run up to the vote pollsters spent huge sums of money speaking to thousands of Americans. They were careful to collect the best possible data from representative samples, and they applied their finest statistical minds to analysing the numbers. Yet almost no-one predicted that Donald Trump would win. So – our question this week – why did the polls get it so wrong? Our expert witnesses explain why polling is getting harder, and why many pollsters weren’t – despite that – very far wide of the mark.
(Photo: Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump listen during the town hall debate at Washington University in St Louis, Missouri, October 2016. Credit: Getty Images)
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | If you weren't alone, |
| 0:02.0 | If you expected Hillary Clinton to win the American election, you weren't alone. |
| 0:08.0 | I feel confident that Hillary will be the next president. |
| 0:11.0 | Five new polls have come out in the last 24 hours, |
| 0:14.3 | all with Hillary Clinton ahead. |
| 0:15.7 | I continue to believe Mr. Trump will not be president. |
| 0:17.9 | We've got the national poll that shows are up by nine, |
| 0:19.6 | another one shows are up by 14, |
| 0:20.9 | another one shows her up by three. |
| 0:22.4 | It is like numbers overload. |
| 0:24.4 | You know what happened next. |
| 0:27.1 | I've just received a call from Secretary Clinton. She congratulated us on our victory. |
| 0:36.1 | Almost every US pollster, including Donald Trump's own, |
| 0:39.7 | thought they knew who the 45th American president would be, but the US electorate appears to have made |
| 0:45.6 | fools of them all. |
| 0:47.8 | You're listening to the inquiry, and I'm Mann Vane Rana. |
| 0:51.3 | This week we're asking, why did the polls get it so wrong? |
| 0:57.0 | Part 1, the miniature electorate. If you're surprised the pollsters call the election for the wrong candidate, |
| 1:10.0 | that's probably because you expect them to get it right. And it's true that polling has become |
| 1:15.3 | very sophisticated, but it didn't start out that way. |
| 1:19.1 | Newspapers get into this business in the early 19th century around the 1820s. |
| 1:25.0 | They would print little ballots questions in the paper itself |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.