Kellyanne Predicts “Blue Wave” was Exaggeration from Discredited Pollsters

Kellyanne Conway is President Trump’s champion of snark, especially for elections where Trump is in trouble.

In Politico on October 10, to explain away polls that showed Democrats winning the midterm House election by 7 points and predicting they would pick up at least 23 seats to win a majority, she went back to her and Trump’s tired trope of the 2016 election polls: “Let’s not forget the same geniuses that predicted a huge romp by ‘that woman’ who lost in 2016 are the same people predicting a huge win by the Democrats this time.”

Kellyanne Conway | Alex Wong/Getty

Kellyanne, a pollster herself, probably knew better, but in any event, was dead wrong. Democrats won at last count 39 seats and are debating who should be their Speaker. They beat the Republicans by 8.6 million votes, capturing 53.1 million, or a win of 8 points, the same as the generic ballot test, which varied between 7 and 8 points the last month. NBC News reports it was the largest House margin for Democrats since the Republican Watergate debacle in 1974.

National pollsters and pundits also predicted the Republicans would hold the Senate.

Polls in Colorado were on the mark and polls caught the right side of senate races in Nevada, Montana, Tennessee and Texas. But, they missed Republican senate wins in Missouri, Indiana and late counting Florida. Polls underreported Democratic House strength in California. But mostly, misses were within the margin of error and, all in all, a very good night for the profession and not very good for Kellyanne.