Reality check: no, the polls weren't off in 2016 that much, Trump's chances just skyrocketed in the week before election day

 I keep hearing people act like the polls were off on election day in 2016 and that's why no one predicted trump could win, and uh...no they weren't. I actually just went through the effort of compiling my entire 5 months' worth of predictions into a single chart showing the overall election odds and this is what I came up with. For much of June-August, the odds weren't that unlike Biden's chances now. Trump had anywhere between a 5% and a 25% chance of winning, and Clinton was at 75-95%. There were two major points where the polls dipped for Clinton, leading to Trump being within striking distance of winning. The first was in september. Clinton had a bad month in september if I recall. She got sick and I remember her crawling into her limo, and I remember that really made people question her health. And then there was the week before election day, where it seemed like as everyone who made up their minds at the last minute made up their minds, they swung trump.

Also, polling averages themselves can be lagging indicators. These polls could have been from a few weeks ago, and got mixed in with ones from the last week leading up to the election. As such they might have underestimated the shift. On election day, I have 56% chance Clinton, 44% Trump. It was almost 50-50, and you can see that on that chart. We went from Clinton having an 80% chance through october to having around a 55-60% chance in early november. I remember having to constantly update my predictions throughout the 7th and into the morning of the 8th. And I remember the polls got more dismal for Clinton literally by the hour. I had to make last minute changes to states like Florida if I remember right because the polling averages shifted toward Trump literally on the morning of election day (or perhaps the night before). Eventually in the afternoon of election day I locked in my predictions, but yeah, it was chaotic. Anyone who was serious and objective about the polling could see Clinton was showing considerable weakness. It was only the media spinning it as this was a layup for clinton with them trying to do victory laps in R+5 states down south. It was actually really arrogant of clinton to do that. But that's why she lost in my opinion. 2016 was an election cycle of people hating both candidates, it was just a matter of who was hated more, and it turned out that the last minute swing vote decided clinton was worse. 

So let's not act like there weren't any signs that Trump could've won. I remained cautiously optimistic for clinton and believed she had the edge, but at 56%, that's just slightly better than a coin flip. I know people act like nate silver giving Clinton "only" a 70% chance made people act like he was the greatest thing since sliced bread, but yeah, it was less than that even. It was a 56% chance. Nothing to be confident about at all. For the record, that's roughly 4/7 in fraction form. Yeah.