An Odd Thing Happend Last Presidential Election.
I remember debating right wingers in various places during the run up to the 2016 election about who would win. I had poll numbers to cite, and analytics based models from places like fivethirtyeight.com, and they had their gut instincts about "what people want" and how people generally feel about Hillary Clinton. I felt confident they were wrong because of the unscientific and (frankly) silly basis for their assertions.
Then something odd happened. There was a systematic error in the polls, and Hillary Clinton lost.
It was demoralizing and IMO a lot of people learned the wrong lessons from it.
A bunch of the right wingers I was talking to learned that they are Nostradamus, and that their gut instincts are infallible.
And a lot of us learned that we can't trust polls and statistical models, no matter what.
I think it's worth noting that what happened last election was ODD. There was a relatively large polling error, and there were a relatively large number of undecided voters. If you don't think the douchebag Trump supporters who were crowing about how Trump would ride a silent majority to the whitehouse before the last election are more insightful than the average person, then ask yourself what you can actually trust.
I think the answer is the people who spend their careers trying their best to implement accurate and dispassionate models of how the electorate is thinking.
Polls aren't always accurate, and neither are the analyses that follow from them, but lets take a minute to appreciate that in 2016 the polling error was ABNORMAL (i.e. the largest since before the 1980s), and not read too much into it.
Don't give in to irrational worry. Stay calm, trust the polls and GOTV!
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