[potatosoup]

> In the immediate wake of Mr. Trump’s surprise election

How was it a surprise? With huge crowd sizes at his rallies (that NYT didn't show, but RSBN for example did), strong populist message that worked, and the awful candidate the other side put up (while sadly destroying Bernie), I was not surprised.

[IshKebab]

Because most poll models gave him a small chance of success. How bad is your memory?

[mixmax]

If I remember correctly 538 put him at around 25-30% chance of winning the election.

Certainly an underdog, but with a reasonable chance of success.

[hedora]

538 was widely attacked / mocked because they gave him such high numbers. Many people were surprised by the outcome.

Also, it was clear on election night that neither Hillary nor Trump had prepared a speech for a Trump win. (Watch Trump's victory speech from election night. Hillary had to awkwardly postpone hers till morning because she didn't book the venue long enough to handle a close race.)

I suspected 538's projections were spot on because of math and stuff, but many (most?) people did not.

[golergka]

You're assuming majority of people put faith in those polls?

[potatosoup]

Interestingly enough, the same pollsters are now saying that Trump has a 37% or something approval rating. And Obama went out with a 60%+ approval rating.

Until they find a way to poll a significant slice of the population truly representative of the electorate, I'm surprised people can take them seriously. Since we're on HN, there is a startup idea here somewhere.

(Edited to remove an electoral hypothesis, so that we can discuss polls and not politics.)

[flavor8]

Hillary ran a sub-par campaign as one of the least popular candidates in recent history, and that hurt down-ticket races. The democrats made a strategic mistake by allowing Clintonistas to take over the DNC and party establishment to the point that she was essentially "the anointed", and faced no real competition. Had e.g. Biden or even Franken run, the results might be quite different. Heck, if Obama had run against Trump (for a third term, were such a thing possible) it would likely be a different story. This is not the whole situation, of course; e.g. districts are more gerrymandered than ever, reducing competitiveness and allowing party establishments to push their favored candidates (out of touch establishment = unpopular candidate); e.g. the last congress was the most dysfunctional in decades, meaning that the bills that made it were compromises, and not a full test of democrat ideas; media echo chambers have polarized voters; etc.

As easy as it is to critique Obama's policies on privacy & foreign policy, he was assured and rational, which people like in a leader. It's entirely reasonable that there's such a wide gap in approval polls. There's really no reason to significantly doubt them.

Regardless of whether you agree on the above, we're about to see the GOP have its way and push a slew of policies that they favor. Many will actually be favorable for entrepreneurs and startups, but my guess is that overall they will turn out to be quite unpopular. I predict the house to flip back in 2018 and for Trump to be crushed in 2020 (if he makes it that far without being impeached.) We'll see.

[GavinMcG]

"Common sense" maybe shouldn't be trusted if it's leading you to silly conclusions. The Dems lost the Presidency, as well, even though nearly 3 million more people voted for the Democratic Party candidate than the winning one.

Plenty of things that are "common sense" don't pan out once you throw in gerrymandering and voter turnout.

[em3rgent0rdr]

Approval ratings are different from chance of winning election. Both candidates were generally disliked. That's consistent with his low approval ratings now.