We thought the signs pointed to Hillary Clinton winning the White House. We thought that even if she lost Florida, North Carolina, and Ohio, her Midwestern “firewall” of states that not only had voted for Barack Obama twice, but hadn’t voted for a Republican since the 1980s, would hold for her. It didn’t — Trump blew a hole in what we dubbed “Fortress Obama.” Remarkably, this all happened while Clinton was winning Virginia by a larger margin than Obama did in 2012 and almost certainly winning the national popular vote.
Every two years, we put out an update after the election asking, “How did we do?” Well, let’s see: CONT.
Larry J. Sabato, Kyle Kondik & Geoffrey Skelley, Sabato’s Crystal Ball