There’s one state to watch on election night if you want to know if the polling is accurate: New Hampshire.
That’s what Sam Wang, the Princeton University professor who runs the university’s election consortium, told Business Insider on Friday.
Wang, a top election forecaster, explained why the Granite State is key to determining whether the polling leading up to an election is, in fact, accurate. He said New Hampshire will be the state he’s watching closely on Election Day for that exact purpose.
“So four years ago I watched New Hampshire because they count fast and it was a small state and I wanted to know if the polls were accurate,” he said. “And so early on election night, I was watching New Hampshire, and it was coming in right on the button with polls. So my thought was, ‘OK, all this talk about polls being inaccurate is probably wrong because New Hampshire came in on the button.'”
President Barack Obama defeated Republican nominee Mitt Romney by 5.6 percentage points in the state in 2012, which was a bit more than the RealClearPolitics average. That average had Obama winning by 2 percentage points.
"So having established that, I said to my friend at a viewing party, 'Let's watch Fox News and see how those guys are reacting, because I'm pretty sure of what's going to happen tonight,'" he said. "I want to watch that."
"And so we watched that, and it was like a horrible dinner party where your ride does not come for three hours and it had that quality," he continued. "It was just super interesting to watch Karl Rove have his little meltdown."
Wang's forecast currently has Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee, winning New Hampshire solidly. It also has the former secretary of state winning 317 Electoral College votes.
The current RealClearPolitics average for New Hampshire has Clinton up 5.7 points on Republican nominee Donald Trump.