If Clinton does win the popular vote then it’ll make the polling look a tad less bad
Whatever this is going to go down as a massive polling miss
This is becoming a bit of a pattern. A massive election in which the pollsters are seen to have performed badly.
We haven’t got the final national vote shares yet but it is likely that Hillary Clinton will have topped Trump so the deviations for many in the RCP list above will be within the margins of error. Unfortunately for her it is state Electoral College Votes that matter not the popular vote.
Some of the state polling, though, was out by quite some margin.
Inevitably this is going to undermine confidence in polling generally in many different countries and my guess is that we’ll see far fewer surveys being commissioned. That’s what happened in the UK post the GE2015 polling fail where the number of surveys is nothing like what it was in the 2010-2015 parliament,
But there’ll always be a need to take a snapshot of public opinion and polling will continue in some form.
As for the betting I feel that I’ve had a lucky escape. I had bought Clinton at 302 ECVs on the spreads and would have had a massive liability if I’d stuck with the bet. Fortunately I got out at a nice profit at the weekend.