On November 3, 1948, President Harry Truman had his picture taken holding a copy of the Chicago Daily Tribune, which, on its front page, declared that he had lost the previous day's presidential election.

The headline was, of course, a hair-raising mistake made by pollsters and journalists. But did the pollsters get it right this time? Well, there were polls that were wrong, but most of the polls leading up to the 2012 elections were right on the money.

The popular Real Clear Politics website summed up all the polls it could get its hands on each day and accurately forecast the results in 49 of the 50 states. According to RCP, President Barack Obama was in the lead in ten of the 12 swing states, and indeed, Obama defeated Republican challenger Mitt Romney in all those states. The site also accurately predicted that Romney had lost his advantage in the popular vote in the last days before the election. Their summary of the polls concerning the House of Representatives and the Senate was almost spot on.

It appears that the biggest loser on the pollster front was Fox commentator Dick Morris. He persistently insisted that Romney would win by a landslide. When asked why his predictions were so different from the rest of the polls, he replied that most pollsters don't know how to analyze the data. Morris was right about one thing, though: One must never take a poll at face value. It is important to understand voter behavior and the methodological aspects of the polls.

Four times in U.S. history, a candidate won the election while losing the popular vote. Those in the know were certain, however, that this time — contrary to the raw data coming from some of the polls — Obama would not only win a majority in the Electoral College, but the popular vote as well.

Prof. Avraham Diskin is a lecturer at the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya and a researcher at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

טעינו? נתקן! אם מצאתם טעות בכתבה, נשמח שתשתפו אותנו