There was a lack of polling conducted right up until the end of the election. | Getty How could the polling be so wrong?

The signs of a polling disaster were all there, but almost no one besides Donald Trump was paying attention.

There were surveys showing Trump winning, but they were ignored by most news outlets, dismissed as partisan polls conducted using automated phone technology that eschews calling cell-phone users.


There was a lack of polling conducted right up until the end of the election. If polls are going to be used for predictive purposes – as the popular computer models from FiveThirtyEight, the New York Times Upshot and HuffPost Pollster do – then reliable polling up through the final days of the campaign is essential.

Instead, the state polling this year was sparse, especially in the closing days. Of the 11 states POLITICO identified as Electoral College battlegrounds earlier this year, four of them didn’t see a nonpartisan, public, live-interview poll for the final week of the campaign: Colorado, Nevada, Ohio and Wisconsin.

Taken together, it was a recipe for an epic polling failure.

“I think the signs that Republicans down-ticket would have a good night were there,” Republican pollster Jon McHenry said early Wednesday. “But I didn't see late enough polling to say, ‘Oh, sure, I saw Trump coming.’”

Few, it seems, paid attention to the surveys from the Trafalgar Group – a Georgia-based consulting firm that, on its website, celebrates the time RealClearPolitics picked up one of its Florida primary polls – showing Trump ahead. The group’s Pennsylvania poll was the only one of dozens since late July to show the GOP nominee in the lead there – but it was also the only poll conducted into this past weekend, as voters made their final choices.

The Trafalgar Group was somewhat prolific on Monday, the day before the election, releasing surveys in Florida (Trump ahead by 4 points), Michigan (Trump ahead by 2 points) and Georgia (Trump ahead by 7 points).

Other small Republican firms also released polls in the final days that pointed to Tuesday’s result. Harper Polling, a Pennsylvania-based automated polling firm that has worked for Republican candidates and groups, had the presidential race deadlocked in Pennsylvania.

Strategic National, a Republican firm in Michigan, published a survey showing a tied race there.

But, on balance, these polls received little attention. It wasn’t bias against Trump: The polls were mostly discounted because they came from partisan outlets with a stake in the election results, and because in most cases they were conducted using automated methodology that can’t survey voters who don’t have landline phones – a group that skews younger and more diverse.

Even in those that did have reliable polling late in the race, there were indications things were become more treacherous for Clinton. She led by 1 point in the last live-interview poll in Florida, which Trump won by 1 point.

In Iowa, legendary pollster J. Ann Selzer scored again: Her final poll showed Trump ahead by 7 points, and he won by 9.

Even the reliable polling in Michigan suggested a tightening race: The only live-caller pollster gave Clinton an 8-point lead in late October, but cut that lead in half over the first three days of November. But then the polling stopped. (Michigan remained too-close-to-call when this story was published.)

The Republican polling in Pennsylvania clearly outperformed the nonpartisan public surveys. And unlike in other states, pollsters mostly stayed in here until the end: Muhlenberg College conducted a survey from October 30 through last Friday and found Clinton ahead by 6 points.

Wisconsin was a significant polling failure, however. The state that put Trump over the top, according to The Associated Press’ count, looked out of reach for Trump in the public polling: Clinton led by 6 points in two surveys conducted by academic institutions in late October. The final poll concluded a week before Election Day.

Yet the whole time, buried beneath the surface, were indications that Trump had a path to victory.

Clinton’s modest advantage in national polls appeared stable: While she led Trump by only the low-to-mid-single-digits, it was consistent across most surveys. Indeed, Clinton may yet emerge as the popular-vote winner when all the ballots are finally tallied, though by a smaller margin than the polls indicated.

But her Electoral College position was more precarious, right up until the end. The final polls showed the two candidates neck-and-neck in the largest battleground states. And the large share of undecided and third-party voters made her advantage even more fragile.

State polls showed Clinton and Trump were tied in Florida and North Carolina. Trump was ahead in Iowa and Ohio. He won all four states on Tuesday.

Putting him over the top, however, were Democratic firewall states, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, where the polls on which POLITICO and most news organizations rely showed Clinton ahead.