The more crucial point was that the poll correctly detected Trump's appeal to a key bloc of voters: conservative whites who had sat out the 2012 election but intended to vote this year.
That group strongly favored Trump, the poll found.
The poll's ability to pick up those voters, Kapteyn said, stemmed from its approach, which differs notably from the one used by most major surveys.
Instead of asking people to simply choose between the candidates, the Daybreak survey asked respondents to rate, on a scale from 0 to 100, their chance of voting for Trump, Clinton or some other candidate. The poll also asked people to use the same 0-100 scale to rate their likelihood of voting.
Moreover, by asking participants to rate their chance of voting, the (USC) poll could take advantage of information from everyone in its sample group, rather than cast aside those who do not meet a test for being a "likely voter," as most traditional surveys do.
"One of the ways in which other polls may have gone wrong is that they have a hard time defining who is going to vote," he said. Polling firms "should look at their likely voter model" and think about whether they are excluding too many potential voters, he said...
Unlike many pollsters, Kapteyn, 70, is neither a political scientist nor a political activist. His work on predicting election results is an outgrowth of his main research interest on how people make decisions on their finances.
okay?