WASHINGTON—In response to widespread criticism that they had failed to predict Donald Trump’s victory in the 2016 election, analysts from polling organizations around the nation admitted Thursday they had underestimated the influence of voters’ adrenal glands on the presidential race. “We always try to account for as many factors affecting voting behavior as possible, but looking back on our final pre-election projections, we must own up to the fact that our models clearly undervalued the impact Americans’ adrenal glands would have on the final outcome,” said Zogby Analytics researcher David Patti, adding that although he and his colleagues had made sure to factor voters’ endocrine systems into their forecasting algorithms, they had not anticipated just how active the stress hormone–producing organs would be among likely voters. “The problem we ran into was basing our assumptions about voters’ adrenaline and noradrenaline levels on the 2008 and 2012 elections, which were much more in line with historical norms. We simply did not see this unprecedented turnout from voters’ adrenal medullas coming. In the future, however, we’ll use simple blood tests to check the adrenaline and cortisol levels in all our polling participants to make sure we don’t get blindsided by something like this again.” Patti noted that, on the other hand, pollsters had done an excellent job of predicting the record-low serotonin levels among this year’s voters.

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