Nate Yeah, not on its own. Stein’s support did cover the Trump-Clinton margin in Michigan and Wisconsin, but I don’t think it’s reasonable to say Clinton would have gotten 100 percent of that vote. It wouldn’t have been enough anyway: Clinton still would have lost Pennsylvania.

There’s a chance that Gary Johnson/Stein combined could have done it, but I don’t know about that. I think the Johnson vote could easily be more of a Trump vote.

Toni You’ve tried to warn about the reliability of exit polls. But of course, readers and journalists are devouring the information and drawing conclusions, which is understandable. But explain why it’s important to hold off for a while on some verdicts.

Nate Well, the exit polls simply aren’t designed to measure the composition of the electorate and the attitudes of specific subgroups. There are a lot of reasons for that, which you can read more about in this piece. But in general, the exit polls portray the electorate as too young, too educated and too diverse. And that means that all of the estimates for each subgroup are distorted as well, since the exit polls have to add up to the right result. In other words, the exit polls usually have a “two wrongs make a right” approach to measuring the electorate, and that just doesn’t work for the sort of demographic and turnout analysis that people want to use them for. That requires a precision that they just can’t provide.

Toni What’s a specific instance in which you think the exit polls are sending the public and journalists in the wrong direction? What about the Hispanic vote, for example?

Nate I think the exit polls are probably off on education, age and the white vote. The exits say that the electorate was half college-educated (too high) and just 15 percent over age 65, and you just can’t reconcile those numbers with what we know about the country.

The exit polls are probably on to something about the Hispanic vote. I think it’s hard to defend that Clinton did as well among Hispanic voters as President Obama, when you look at the results in heavily Hispanic areas. She ran only somewhat ahead of Obama in Miami and Orlando-Kissimmee, despite a big surge in Hispanic turnout. She ran behind Obama in a lot of heavily Hispanic South Texas, New Mexico, Southern Colorado, and the most Hispanic suburban county around Denver.