4 ms·

It's funny that mainstream news sources were saying Clinton was basically guaranteed to win, they were sure, they had no doubts, then they were proven wrong by

It's funny that mainstream news sources were saying Clinton was basically guaranteed to win, they were sure, they had no doubts, then they were proven wrong by what happened. Everyone for 1 day said "Hey maybe the news doesn't know what they are talking about?" The next day everyone forgot, and now we get the same news sources that were so wrong, telling us again the problem is "this". How come they were so wrong and we all knew it, then forgot, then will accept another one of their likely incorrect explanations for why all this happened?

paulddraper 10y ago
It was great watching NBC, CNN, et al election night. Every hour or so there'd be a conversation like A: "What did our polls get so wrong?" B: "Well regardless, it looks like Trump's path to victory...blah blah" Not even an ounce of introspection. Still haven't heard any answers.
- timr 10y ago
  "Not even an ounce of introspection. Still haven't heard any answers." Really now. No introspection? No answers? It might help to read the post-election coverage, which was, you know...all introspection. Nonstop. For the last week. To help you out, here's a sample: http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-polls-missed-trump-we-asked-pollsters-why/ http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-polls-missed-trump-w... http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/what-a-difference-2-percentage-points-makes/ http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/what-a-difference-2-perc... http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/16/upshot/presidential-forecast-postmortem.html http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/16/upshot/presidential-foreca... http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2016/11/09/for-the-record-trump-wins/93525286/ http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2016/... http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2016/11/donald-trump-win-pollsters-wrong-161109225338646.html http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2016/11/donald-tru... http://www.nature.com/news/pollsters-struggle-to-explain-failures-of-us-presidential-forecasts-1.20968 http://www.nature.com/news/pollsters-struggle-to-explain-fai... If you're willing to go so far as to download a podcast, you could try any of: NPR Politics, On the Media, FiveThirtyEight Politics and Left Right and Center, all of whom have done at least one in-depth story on the polling miss in the last week.
  - paulddraper 10y ago
    I was talking about the mainstream TV news outlets that handled most(?) of the election night coverage. These often have their own polls their responsible for. It's great saner minds have looked into it; I meant to point out the dearth of follow-up by big-name news stations.
kybernetikos 10y ago
I'm not sure why people are holding 'failure to predict a Trump win' against the news. It's not the news' job to tell us what is going to happen, but to tell us accurately what has happened.
- randomgyatwork 10y ago
  True, it is not their job to predict the future... But if they go about doing that, then they are responsible. No one is forcing news organizations to publish polls, they do it by choice. But that is hardly the point, most of the media told us for months that Trump wasn't a real candidate, then he wouldn't win and that Clinton was the only real candidate and you had choose her. They published tons of positive articles about her and tones of negative about him. In a general sense this tarnishes their credibility, either they lied or they didn't know what they were talking about for the last 6 months. Being wrong about who would win isn't so much of the problem, its more about being totally clueless about what was going on and what people actually thought about the situation.... They failed at their job of telling everyone what had happened.
  - jjuel 10y ago
    They were not the ones predicting anything. Polls were doing that. They were just reporting what the polls said. Judging by what you say I would have never heard anything bad about Clinton. No one ever brought up her emails. We didn't hear anything about a new investigation. /s Oddly enough we never really did hear in the news that Trump had two court cases coming up after the election. I literally never heard that mentioned on GMA. I heard about the Clinton-Comey investigation every morning.
    - randomgyatwork 10y ago
      If you keep repeating something that isn't true, people stop listening to what you say... It doesn't mater if you made up the story or someone told it to you, the spreader takes the responsibility when it comes to reputation.
  - 10y ago
matt4077 10y ago
The polls were off by about 2%. Unfortunately, it made a lot of a difference because of the winner-take-all system. These polls, and aggregation models are also not produced by the media themselves, they just report on it as they do for the weather forecast. Also we didn't "all know it". How would that even work? "I can feel there is a great enthusiasm for Trump, and he will win the election, although he'll get 2 million fewer votes than Clinton"?
JohnStrange 10y ago
What are you complaining about? The news correctly reported the polls. Are journalists supposed to make up their own polls or report their "gut feelings" because trained statisticians with decades of experience with exit polls can sometimes, under unusual circumstances get it wrong?

paulddraper 10y ago

It was great watching NBC, CNN, et al election night. Every hour or so there'd be a conversation like A: "What did our polls get so wrong?" B: "Well regardless, it looks like Trump's path to victory...blah blah" Not even an ounce of introspection. Still haven't heard any answers.

timr 10y ago
"Not even an ounce of introspection. Still haven't heard any answers." Really now. No introspection? No answers? It might help to read the post-election coverage, which was, you know...all introspection. Nonstop. For the last week. To help you out, here's a sample: http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-polls-missed-trump-we-asked-pollsters-why/ http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-polls-missed-trump-w... http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/what-a-difference-2-percentage-points-makes/ http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/what-a-difference-2-perc... http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/16/upshot/presidential-forecast-postmortem.html http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/16/upshot/presidential-foreca... http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2016/11/09/for-the-record-trump-wins/93525286/ http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2016/... http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2016/11/donald-trump-win-pollsters-wrong-161109225338646.html http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2016/11/donald-tru... http://www.nature.com/news/pollsters-struggle-to-explain-failures-of-us-presidential-forecasts-1.20968 http://www.nature.com/news/pollsters-struggle-to-explain-fai... If you're willing to go so far as to download a podcast, you could try any of: NPR Politics, On the Media, FiveThirtyEight Politics and Left Right and Center, all of whom have done at least one in-depth story on the polling miss in the last week.
- paulddraper 10y ago
  I was talking about the mainstream TV news outlets that handled most(?) of the election night coverage. These often have their own polls their responsible for. It's great saner minds have looked into it; I meant to point out the dearth of follow-up by big-name news stations.

kybernetikos 10y ago

I'm not sure why people are holding 'failure to predict a Trump win' against the news. It's not the news' job to tell us what is going to happen, but to tell us accurately what has happened.

randomgyatwork 10y ago
True, it is not their job to predict the future... But if they go about doing that, then they are responsible. No one is forcing news organizations to publish polls, they do it by choice. But that is hardly the point, most of the media told us for months that Trump wasn't a real candidate, then he wouldn't win and that Clinton was the only real candidate and you had choose her. They published tons of positive articles about her and tones of negative about him. In a general sense this tarnishes their credibility, either they lied or they didn't know what they were talking about for the last 6 months. Being wrong about who would win isn't so much of the problem, its more about being totally clueless about what was going on and what people actually thought about the situation.... They failed at their job of telling everyone what had happened.
- jjuel 10y ago
  They were not the ones predicting anything. Polls were doing that. They were just reporting what the polls said. Judging by what you say I would have never heard anything bad about Clinton. No one ever brought up her emails. We didn't hear anything about a new investigation. /s Oddly enough we never really did hear in the news that Trump had two court cases coming up after the election. I literally never heard that mentioned on GMA. I heard about the Clinton-Comey investigation every morning.
  - randomgyatwork 10y ago
    If you keep repeating something that isn't true, people stop listening to what you say... It doesn't mater if you made up the story or someone told it to you, the spreader takes the responsibility when it comes to reputation.
- 10y ago

matt4077 10y ago

The polls were off by about 2%. Unfortunately, it made a lot of a difference because of the winner-take-all system. These polls, and aggregation models are also not produced by the media themselves, they just report on it as they do for the weather forecast. Also we didn't "all know it". How would that even work? "I can feel there is a great enthusiasm for Trump, and he will win the election, although he'll get 2 million fewer votes than Clinton"?

JohnStrange 10y ago

What are you complaining about? The news correctly reported the polls. Are journalists supposed to make up their own polls or report their "gut feelings" because trained statisticians with decades of experience with exit polls can sometimes, under unusual circumstances get it wrong?