Borrego Sun - Since 1949

Hillary Clinton has conceded the election to Donald Trump, a stunning come-from-behind win. He over-performed in many diverse rural counties throughout the East, Midwest, and Rust Belt not accounted for in any polling, other than almost daily L.A. Times polling, discounted by virtually all election experts as being an “outlier.” All of the other major polls were, in their combined 3-5 percentage point average advantage for Hillary Clinton, dead wrong. The popular polling also widely missed the mark in major demograhics throughout the country, resulting in a serious miscount of expected electoral votes by contributing states. This serious mis-read of the American electorate (also by talking heads on network TV and cable TV news) included a newly introduced and highly-touted “Dynamic Bayesian Forecasting” model used by this reporter to base projections for Election 2016. This model obviously needs to prove a lot more successful in future elections to reach any level of public confidence going forward.

The final results reveal that only actual votes count at the time those votes are cast. Polling and subsequent analysis will never be the same after this election, for the simple reason that people won’t trust them to be reflective of real world conditions, particularly the preferences of real world voters.

With Republican control of at the White House, House of Representatives, and probably the Senate, just three of the many burning questions will be: How does Donald Trump go about the business of governing? Can he provide competent leadership? Can the Senate and House work with President-elect Trump on a host of critical but unsettled national and international issues? Stay tuned.