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Republican Senator Thom Tillis’ victory in the North Carolina Senate race marks yet another setback for the polling industry, whose polls had largely shown Tillis to be following his Democratic opponent, Cal Cunningham.
Fox News called the race for Tillis on Tuesday night after Cunningham conceded. Tillis led Cunningham by just under 2% with few votes remaining when the Democrat conceded.
Cunningham had consistently led Tillis in the RealClearPolitics poll average since late June. The Democratic candidate entered election night with a 2.6% lead in the RCP average.
The polls showed Cunningham a variety of leads ahead of the election.
An NBC News poll conducted in the week following the election showed Cunningham in the lead by 10 points, an Emerson poll that concluded on October 31 showed Cunningham up three points, and CNBC and Change Research published a poll the day before of the election showing Tillis down four points.
Pollsters took criticism after races across the country were much closer than the polls had projected.
FRANK LUNTZ: THE POLLSTERS ‘HAVE NEVER BEEN SO FALSE’
Senator Susan Collins, of R-Maine, won her re-election bid by more than eight points, despite a steady drag in the polls for months. The RCP average showed Collins’ challenger, Maine House President Sarah Gideon, leading Collins by six points.
“It is not too early to say that the systematic underestimation of President Trump’s support by the polls was very similar to the poll failure of four years ago, and may have exceeded it,” wrote on Tuesday. Nate Cohn, New York Times analyst.
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