WASHINGTON—Explaining that it had been left with no other choice after witnessing the election returns earlier this week, polling firm Gallup announced Thursday that it was forced to destroy a defective sample group that had failed to accurately forecast the Democratic primary in Michigan. “Unfortunately, it was clear by the time 60 percent of precincts had reported that something was seriously wrong with the participants in our telephone surveys, so we had to make the tough but necessary decision to put all of them down as quickly as possible,” said Gallup CEO Jim Clifton, adding that the 1,200 poll respondents were immediately gathered from across the state and eradicated “swiftly, but humanely” for having inaccurately projected Hillary Clinton would defeat Bernie Sanders by 21 percentage points. “We still don’t know exactly how these unexpected complications arose, but once we saw the group wasn’t properly reflecting the turnout of independents and voters under 29, we had to eliminate them before they caused any more damage. I just wish we had caught it before Tuesday, because all of this could have been avoided.” Clifton added that as a preventative measure, Gallup has already quarantined all sample groups in the state of Illinois and will not release them until the organization is sure its polling projections will fall within a 3-point margin of error.

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