The Polls Weren’t Wrong (Again) || Carl Allen on the 2026 Midterms, from Texas to Maine
Did the polls blow the 2026 midterms? Carl Allen says no, and this time he’s got the receipts.
Election-data guy Carl Allen, author of The Polls Weren’t Wrong, is back for a post-midterm breakdown recorded live on Substack. He and Corey go through what his forecast caught that most others missed, from the Democrats’ 50%-or-near-it poll numbers in Maine, Michigan, and Kansas to Texas, the one state where he thinks the polls really did miss. Along the way, Carl explains why the way undecided voters break matters more than almost anything else, why a 99% forecast still has to fail sometimes, and how he decides where to put his money when his model and the prediction markets disagree.
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About Our Guest
Carl Allen is a researcher and analyst of sports and political data. His background includes quantitative analysis for University of Louisville Baseball and MLB data work for Stats Perform. His research focuses on inefficiencies in political betting markets and on better methods for measuring poll accuracy. He’s the author of The Polls Weren’t Wrong (Chapman & Hall/CRC).
Links and Resources
- Carl’s Substack: realcarlallen.substack.com
- Carl’s previous TP&R episode: www.politicsandreligion.us/the-polls-were-right-2026
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“When your hypothesis disagrees with the data, you should trust the data.” – Carl Allen
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