… In a sense, the E.U. referendum joins a pretty long list of election forecasting errors. But this one was a bit different: It was not a cataclysmic polling failure. …
If there’s a lesson here, it’s a fairly straightforward one: Don’t get too confident in contests when the polls show a very tight race.
There might be a somewhat more subtle lesson here as well, one that ought to resonate in the United States after the rise of Donald Trump as the presumptive Republican nominee. Well-educated, establishment-minded analysts — whether in journalism, finance or betting markets — may have a tendency to discount the willingness of populist, conservative and less educated voters to support candidates and policies that previously seemed unfathomable, even when the polls say it could really happen. CONT.
Nate Cohn, New York Times