Given that dramatically headlined public opinion polls about likely election outcomes are much in the news these days, it’s perhaps time for a word of caution.

A new study from UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business tracks pre-election polls and election outcomes and finds a glaring inconsistency:

How confident should you be in election polls? Not nearly as confident as the pollsters claim, according to a new Berkeley Haas study.

 Most election polls report a 95% confidence level. Yet an analysis of 1,400 polls from 11 election cycles found that the outcome lands within the poll’s result just 60% of the time. And that’s for polls just one week before an election—accuracy drops even more further out.

“If you’re confident, based on polling, about how the 2020 election will come out, think again,” said Berkeley Haas Prof. Don Moore, who conducted the analysis with former student Aditya Kotak…