The polls missed Donald Trump’s election. Individual polls missed, at the state level and nationally (though national polls weren’t far off). So did aggregated polls. So did poll-based forecasts such as ours. And so did exit polls. …
Pollsters will need weeks or months to sort through what happened, and some had bigger misses than others. Some also were finished polling before the full effects of FBI Director James Comey’s letter to Congress could be felt.
We emailed dozens of pollsters — the same group we’ve polled regularly since 2014 about their work — early Wednesday for their first impressions. Nearly 20 got back to us by early afternoon. CONT.
Carl Bialik & Harry Enten, FiveThirtyEight