The more likely problem is Egypt's precarious political environment and the challenges this presents to pollsters. First, the political dynamics have changed so much over the course of the last 16 months it is hard to get a baseline understanding of Egyptian public opinion. Although the political lines in Egypt's ongoing political struggle (sorry!) are clear, identified voters are likely a minority. That great reservoir of average Egyptians is likely being pulled along with events, whipsawed like the rest of us by the twists and turns of the political arena. This is the kind of environment where people are constantly changing their minds as developments unfold. Second, it is clear that polling is unreliable not only under authoritarian political systems, but also during political transitions. People lie or tell pollsters what they want to hear, which is the same thing.

Polling wasn't the only problem, however. Just like the idée fixe of the decade before the January 25th uprising that pitted Gamal Mubarak against Omar Suleiman to be the president of Egypt, somewhere along the line the notion that Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh and Amr Moussa were the frontrunners became embedded in the minds of observers. I'd love to do an archaeology of ideas to figure out how this impression came into being. If I had to guess, I would say it was a combination of those unreliable polls, the notion that Moussa had carried over the popularity he enjoyed when he was foreign minister, and the idea that former Brother Aboul Fotouh was drawing support from younger members of the Brotherhood, liberals, Salafis, and some revolutionaries that placed those two candidates in the top slots. The fact that they debated live on national television to the exclusion of Morsi, Ahmed Shafiq, and Hamdeen Sabahi, the three actual top vote getters, further reinforced the idea that it was a two way race between Moussa and Aboul Fotouh. Given the unpredictability of Egyptian politics, the Moussa-Aboul Fotouh prism obscured more than it revealed. It was a mistake to take their front-runners status at face value.

So what should I/we have done differently? Looking back over the last couple of weeks, it is now clear that Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh had too many constituencies. Since last May, observers have heard over and over again that large numbers of younger Brothers were gravitating to Aboul Fotouh, but clearly not enough. In the week before the election, the alleged liberal Islamist drew the support of the al Nour party, but it was never clear if the party was going to throw its weight and organizational capacity in favor of Aboul Fotouh. That question should have been an important signal that Aboul Fotouh's support may have been more apparent than real. The smattering of liberals and revolutionaries who supported Aboul Fotouh in the belief that he could be "Egypt's Erdogan" was too small to make a difference.