Via David Wharton of the LA Times, I learn today that preseason college football polls are better predictors of eventual bowl game winners than the final polls of the season. Here is Ed Feng of Power Rank:
In other words, after three months, thousands of games, and seemingly millions of words of commentary and analysis, we’re worse at predicting bowl game winners than we were before a single game had been played. There’s some kind of Isaiah Berlin joke to be made here, or perhaps an observation about forests and trees, or maybe just an acknowledgement that this basically describes the human condition.
Of course, this isn’t a sports blog, it’s a politics blog. So you may be wondering whether this result is also true of presidential elections. Well, via Pollster, here’s the Clinton-Trump head-to-head polling for one year before Election Day:
Hillary Clinton wins by about three points! In a couple of months we’ll know whether this ends up being more accurate than the polls done a week before Election Day.
