Lab42’s 10 Year Data Retrospective – PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION OUTCOMES [2016]

Another presidential election will be taking place in a few months and though we are not in the election poll business, we did do a series of presidential election surveys back in 2016.  How did we do?  Not great! Lab42, just like the vast majority of research companies, predicted that Hilary Clinton would beat Donald Trump. However, looking at our data from 2016, there were signs of what was about to happen:

1) Our data showed that Trump was leading Hilary Clinton with a double digit margin (55% for Donald Trump vs. 27% for Hilary Clinton) among voters 65 years old or older, which make up the largest and most likely to vote block of voters.  Based on validated votes, 53% of voters 65+  voted for Donald Trump.

2) Once Hilary Clinton clinched the Democratic nomination, our data indicated that 13% of Bernie Sanders’ voters would vote for Donald Trump  instead of Hilary Clinton.  Analysis by UMass professor Brian Schaffner indicated that about 10% of Bernie’s voters defected to Trump in 2016, helping him win in states like Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.