I asked my friend and research guru Ty Ragland "What happened to the election polls this year and how could they have gone so wrong?" Here's his answer...

Market Research/Polling

Since failed polls have been getting a lot of press, I would like to weigh in on that subject.

· Polls are not predictions, rather snapshots. Extraneous events can happen as did this year (FBI).

· Polls work best when two conventional candidates are facing off.

· They don’t work as well when the context is a change-election and or cause-election. Both happened in 2016 and are quite emotionally-driven. Trump had the stronger “cause.”

The best quote I have seen recently is “data alone doesn’t give you the information you need.” This means numbers are not the same as knowledge. We still need to know what data means to us. The most common need is to learn the “why?” behind the “what.” Political strategists prefer nose counts (are we ahead or behind?) since they are experts on everything else.

The populist dynamic of this campaign wasn’t really that hard to anticipate if one had asked the right questions and had a receptive audience. Since political strategists are classic “experts” with established ways of doing things, those on Hillary’s side would not have been open to the message. They probably are now for future elections.