“There were discussions we had 2-3 weeks out from the election, when the possibility of a runoff still existed. Chris Riley [the Governor’s closest advisor] kept telling us, ‘I’m not telling the Governor we’re in a runoff because I don’t think we’re going to be. I’m going to make the necessary decisions based on your poll to ensure we won’t be in a runoff.’” said John McLaughlin, who polled for Nathan Deal’s successful gubernatorial campaigns in 2010 and 2014.
While many predicted a runoff in Georgia’s Senate race and Gubernatorial contest, neither went into overtime.
The story after the election in Atlanta’s largest newspaper was that every public pollster – including the paper’s “Gold Standard” poll was wrong.
University of Virginia political scientist Larry Sabato called the public polling in Georgia “completely wrong.”
By the time the Deal campaign and McLaughlin stopped polling, around October 23, both the pollster and the campaign were confident that Deal would win reelection without a runoff.
I spoke to Deal pollster John McLaughlin about how they predicted the results of the race more than a week out, while most public pollsters were panned as having been wrong.
While the media fixated on the “horse race” numbers, McLaughlin looked deeper into the crosstabs and formulated predictions based on a more sophisticated model of the electorate. McLaughlin explained how they arrived at their prediction:
via How Pollster John McLaughlin Helped Gov. Nathan Deal Win Reelection – Todd Rehm – Page 1.
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