I think the polls got it wrong because those who knew they would vote for Trump wouldn’t tell anyone for fear of the flack they would get by the admission. Driving around here, I was amazed at the Trump yard signs I saw given that sentiment. However, I also noted that I saw only 2 Hillary yard signs. Given all that, I would have bet the farm on OH at least going for Trump and perhaps winning it all.
I thought he DID win Ohio. I watched the election returns, and haven't really watched much since, cause I was out of town all last week, and wasn't paying much attention to the news.
I think the predictions were wrong because the polls failed to account for the popular/electoral vote split. Everyone was looking at national polls over and over. State polls were done and discussed much less frequently, and even less frequently were they compiled together by anybody to make an electoral prediction.
Granted, the people who did compile state polls still tended to show a Clinton win. However there were far fewer state polls to work with and they showed much more radical swings in results than the national polls, indicating unreliability.
It was a safe bet that the national polls wouldn’t switch to Trump’s favor rapidly enough for him to win the popular vote. But it was not a safe bet to think that Trump could not micro-target a few states right at the end and get his numbers up in a narrow area enough to win the electoral college.
I don’t know if they purposefully twisted the polls. I don’t accept the claim that people wouldn’t answer them honestly. It’s an anonymous phone call. I’ve done phone polls, honest ones and push polls. Push polls are pretty obvious and I think most of us hang up on them, but if I have time, I’ll talk to the honest ones.
I was polled for this election and I hung up on them. I was doing something else and I didn’t feel like dealing with them, so I don’t know if the poll was legitimate. I also didn’t want anything to do with the media during this election. They polled me in the middle of the wikileaks releases and I was thoroughly disgusted by then.
My cell phone has a Palm Beach County area code. I wonder if that’s why they called. I also wonder how many people refused to even talk to them.