Donald Trump’s performance in the US presidential elections is the greatest political upset in living memory. Just days ago, US election polls (and the pollsters and polling analysts who collect them) were arguing over just how certain they were about a Hillary Clinton victory, but now the entire polling industry risks making homeopathy look effective.

Almost every pollster and analyst has egg on their face tonight. The New York Times’ Upshot had Hillary Clinton on an 85 per cent chance of victory. The Huffington Post put Clinton on a 98.3 per cent chance of winning, Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight website had Clinton at a (more even handed) 66.9 per cent chance and the Princeton Election Consortium's probability of a Hillary win was a ballsy 99 per cent. The pollsters and the polling analysts have all had a shocking night.

Part of this surprise seems to have come from Trump’s ability to mobilise new voters who are harder to anticipate for pollsters and analysts. Trump has tapped into white working class Americans who don’t have a history of voting. Trump’s rulebook-defying campaign has excited a part of the electorate that nobody knew could come to the polls, upsetting expectations and reaching new corners of the population.

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It may also turn out to be the case that supporters for Donald Trump were shamed into keeping their support quiet. Shy Trump supporters may have kept their support secret from pollsters out of social pressure not to admit their support for a candidate labelled as racist and sexist. Hillary Clinton has been a deeply unpopular candidate with low trust ratings, but the vitriol and scorn poured upon Trump supporters may have kept many of them from admitting what they’d do in the voting booth.

It may also be the case that many Americans weren’t ready to vote for a female president, and that their discomfort was something they weren’t prepared to admit to others or to themselves until they reached the voting booth. These people would be hard to model, and hard to poll. There has never been a female presidential candidate from a major political party before: the reluctance of Americans to vote for a woman is therefore hard to model.

There’s also a potential confirmation bias to how the polls were weighted. Polling analysts weight the polls: it’s possible that the elite, Washington insiders who conduct polling would alter their models to fit their expectation that a Trump victory is all but impossible.