Most of the tracking polls conducted immediately before the election also stumbled and bumbled to the finish line. To the credit of each, every major tracking poll had the winner either ahead of or within the margin of sampling error. But few surveys foreshadowed Arizona Sen. John McCain's wipeout win over Bush, and many had Vice President Gore with double-digit leads over former senator Bill Bradley on the Democratic side. Gallup for USA Today and CNN came closest. On the Democratic side, ARG made a praiseworthy recovery by nailing the margin, reporting a five-point Gore advantage in their final polling.
Tracking polls are fragile things.
Getting the margin right with large numbers of don't-knows may be meaningless and perhaps just lucky. Likewise, the size of the lead is how the politicos, pundits and real people talk about tracking poll results. The bold boys and girls who elect to track the horse race should expect their results to be compared with the actual voting, for better or for worse. In non-predictive polls, reporting margins are to be avoided, or at least ignored in favor of simply reporting the overall results. Some differences between election results and election-eve tracking polls is understandable, perhaps even inevitable.