[matt4077]

You're doing a bit of cherry-picking but I guess it's only fair, since reality conspired to do it similarly. Not sure how far off the polls were in aggregate.

But my point was mostly that the media doesn't have much to do with the polling. And secondly, I think it's important to distinguish between ideological bias and just simply mistakes. There are many pollsters from all over the political spectrum and I'm convinced that they made a best effort to be accurate, and that it has just become difficult to do accurate polling. Or that the polling may have even given a very accurate picture of reality, but that volatility has just increased dramatically.

[saynsedit]

My original point said nothing on the media's involvement with polling, outside of simply reporting it. As for the pollsters, whether it was ideological bias or simply mistake is also irrelevant to my original point.

My claim is that the "real news" committed the journalistic equivalent of manslaughter. Whether or not they intended to mislead the public doesn't negate the fact that the public was misled. Blaming "fake news" doesn't justify their own role in misleading the public. There is no court of journalism, but the consequences regardless will be that people will trust the traditional news sources less.

[crdoconnor]

I just picked the states which actually decided the election. For all I know it was 8% off in Oregon too but that wouldn't have mattered.

It did appear that there was a systemic bias against Trump in the polls, whether intentional or not.