Polling has become big business, with millions of dollars spent each elections cycle, so that experts and candidates can figure out how to persuade the American people who to vote for. And that model, just like all the political models in this election may be out the window for good.
Almost none of the nationally recognized polls showed Trump with a lead or even with a halfway decent chance for winning. As The Hill reported, only two of eleven national polls showed Trump with a lead.
Perhaps we are putting too much emphasis on humans drawing the right conclusions. According to Breitbart, MogIA, and artificial intelligence and election predictor not only predicted that Donald Trump would win, but also who the two primary victors would be as well.
Artificial intelligence MogIA predicts fourth election in row with Trump win: https://t.co/SKXQiDtd8D #AI #ArtificialIntelligence #Trump pic.twitter.com/kIFuiJmtwY
— Clickatell (@Clickatell) November 10, 2016
The pollsters and analysts have to be incredibly embarrassed. Not only because the failed to predict Trump’s victory, but also to the extent that they misread all the data in the months leading up to the election.
Artificial Intelligence experts have been dismissive of the results, however. Marie desJardins, AI professor at the University of Maryland said in The Tech Republic,
Claiming a win for AI because it made the right prediction in a singular event, is like believing that Nostradamus was a prophet because some of his predictions happened to come true.
This may echo the sentiments of current pollsters. This was an aberration they say. This was a completely unique election the likes of which we may never see again.
Sounds to me like they might be scared for their jobs because if they were so wrong this time, how can we ever trust their methods in the future?
