Polls get elections wrong. So use Google, says Seth Stephens-Davidowitz

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Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. For the past 90 years, election prognosticators have had one tool in their toolbox: surveys. After the third consecutive American presidential election in which this methodology underestimated support for Donald Trump, there are reasons to doubt it makes sense any more.

Calling a small sample of people and asking them what they are going to do seems anachronistic in a world in which tech behemoths mine billions of online data points to predict consumer actions—behemoths that often know consumers better than they know themselves. Consider the problems with polls. First, people do not answer them.

Survey response rates have dropped to as low as 2%. Second, people mess with them. Younger people are particularly likely to enjoy giving faulty answers.

One academic study found a correlation in survey data between being adopted and various problematic behaviours; when it was found that 19% of those who said they were adopted were just joking, the study was retracted. Third, people lie to pollsters to protect their self-image, something called social-desirability bias. The level of deception can be shocking.

Research shows that roughly four in ten people who did not vote in an election will report in surveys that they did. People are also known to dramatically over-report how much sex they have, their tendency to give to charity and their academic accomplishments. These non-respondents, tricksters and liars probably all played into Mr Trump’s better-than-expected performance.