A ‘Dewey Defeats Truman’ Lesson for the Digital Age

If we were surprised Tuesday night, it was because journalism failed us. As reported in the NY Times, every major source forecasted the Clinton win for which the establishment desperately hoped.

No one predicted a night like this — that Donald J. Trump would pull off a stunning upset over Hillary Clinton and win the presidency. The misfire on Tuesday night was about a lot more than a failure in polling. It was a failure to capture the boiling anger of a large portion of the American electorate that feels left behind by a selective recovery, betrayed by trade deals that they see as threats to their jobs and disrespected by establishment Washington, Wall Street and the mainstream media. | Journalists didn’t question the polling data when it confirmed their gut feeling that Mr. Trump could never in a million years pull it off. They portrayed Trump supporters who still believed he had a shot as being out of touch with reality. In the end, it was the other way around. —New York Times

Post was last modified on 7 Dec 2016 2:03 pm

View Comments

  • Silver didn't exactly predict this, but he gave Trump a much higher chance to win and said this election was very unpredictable and high-variance, with nearly as much chance of a Trump landslide as a Clinton one. And he attacked low-variance aggregators like Wang's.

Share
Published by
Dennis G. Jerz

Recent Posts

First they came… #kristallnacht @nccheshu

First they came… #kristallnacht @nccheshu

3 days ago

Sorry, not sorry. I don’t want such friends.

Back in 2003, shortly after I moved with my wife and two young children to…

5 days ago

In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. @thepublicpgh

In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. @thepublicpgh

5 days ago

Despite its impressive output, generative AI doesn’t have a coherent understanding of the world

[A] popular type of generative AI model can provide turn-by-turn driving directions in New York City…

6 days ago