2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: It kills me to come to a gathering place for democrats [View all]stevenleser
(32,886 posts)The year mildly favored change but not much. People like to point to the polls being wrong. The polls were rarely wrong during the primaries except where the polling agencies and pundits themselves said they didn't have a lot of historical data to help them figure out turnout and models.
During the general, we know from past elections that polls can have trouble when a dramatic last minute event changes the dynamic of the race, like this time with Comey's double interference in the last 14 days, once two weeks out and once three days out. The difference between the final polls and the G.E. is that some percentage, probably around 1-2% of folks who were going to vote Hillary changed their votes and some 2-3% or so stayed home, as a result of Comey.
There was nothing special about this election beyond that, no magical sauce that would have given Sanders the election. Your theories are more wishful thinking than based on facts.