with most political polls ahead of the presidential election pointing to a hillary clinton victory, the news media spent weeks wondering if donald trump would stick to his word and refuse to concede if he lost the election. in the wee hours of wednesday morning, tv anchors were faced with a different question . <u+201c>i didn<u+2019>t ask hillary clinton. i obviously made an oversight,<u+201d> fox news anchor chris wallace said less than an hour before the network called the election for mr. trump. in the final presidential debate , mr. wallace pressed mr. trump on whether he was willing to accept the result of the election, to which mr. trump said he would <u+201c>keep you in suspense.<u+201d> around 2:30 a.m. wednesday, the associated press called wisconsin for mr. trump, putting the republican candidate over the 270 electoral-vote threshold needed to win the presidency . soon after, mrs. clinton called mr. trump to concede, and on wednesday she delivered a concession speech urging her supporters to have an open mind about his presidency. mr. wallace isn<u+2019>t the only journalist now acknowledging oversights. many media outlets and polls had this election wrong, calling into question their research methods and whether they have lost touch with the america between the coasts that carried mr. trump to victory. the new york times website declaring a <u+201c>stunning upset<u+201d> wasn<u+2019>t so shocking to much of the country. going into the final day of the election cycle, almost all of the most widely watched media-polling analysis outfits and political pundits were predicting a comfortable clinton victory. the narrative in the media<u+2014>particularly after the federal bureau of investigation affirmed mrs. clinton wouldn<u+2019>t face charges over her email practices<u+2014>was the race was hers to lose. <u+201c>there is no question the polling was off. it wasn<u+2019>t capturing support for trump,<u+201d> said cbs news president david rhodes. <u+201c>is there a real reckoning for some of this polling and voluminous analysis that suggest this is her race to lose? absolutely, there is.<u+201d> mr. rhodes said tuesday night that there was some evidence that supporters of mr. trump were under-indexing in exit polls, possibly because they were rebuffing poll takers<u+2019> questions. <u+201c>if that was true in the exit polls, you have to ask if that was true in other surveys as well,<u+201d> he said. echoing mr. rhodes<u+2019> concerns, fox news<u+2019> mr. wallace said he has become <u+201c>a big skeptic of exit polls<u+2026>they certainly led one to believe that she was going to win fairly early and handily.<u+201d> mr. wallace noted that there was a similar problem with the 2004 exit polls, which had john kerry far ahead of george w. bush. <u+201c>they dramatically overcounted democrats and undercounted republicans,<u+201d> he said, adding that <u+201c>republicans apparently are less forthcoming than democrats.<u+201d> in the days just before election, a range of polls conducted for media outlets, including the wall street journal and nbc news, abc and the washington post, and cbs news and fox news, put mrs. clinton<u+2019>s popular vote lead at 4 points. only two polls consistently showed trump in the lead<u+2014>the usc dornsife/los angeles times and the ibd/tipp tracking polls. they were often dismissed by pundits and media data analysts as outlying surveys, but in the end turned out to be the most accurate. <u+201c>late in this process we were getting notes suggesting we were crazy because our numbers were a long way from the rest of the polls,<u+201d> said terry jones, investor<u+2019>s business daily<u+2019>s editorial page editor. <u+201c>but we went back and continually retested our data and as things began to tighten we started feeling far more confident about our numbers.<u+201d> going into tuesday, realclearpolitics.com, which compiles a so-called poll of polls, had predicted a narrow clinton victory, estimating that the democratic candidate would eke out 272 electoral votes by holding on to pennsylvania, michigan and wisconsin (but losing nevada). the new york times<u+2019> upshot had predicted that mrs. clinton had an 85% chance of victory, giving her<u+2014>as the media outlet put it<u+2014>the same chance of losing as a national football league kicker missing a 37-yard field goal. early on during tuesday<u+2019>s coverage, the networks seemed to be anticipating a quick night<u+2019>s work. mrs. clinton jumped out to an early electoral lead and tv-news anchors were preparing for the first female president-elect and ready to dismiss mr. trump<u+2019>s nomination as an anomaly and symbol of a republican party in disarray. some voters wanted change, but mr. trump <u+201c>wasn<u+2019>t the right vessel,<u+201d> cbs news anchor charlie rose said on air tuesday. even republican pollsters had forecast mrs. clinton in an early tko. <u+201c>hillary clinton will be the next president of the united states,<u+201d> gop pollster frank luntz tweeted just before most polls started to close on the east coast. while there is much finger-pointing going on about the media<u+2019>s coverage, cbs<u+2019>s mr. rhodes noted, in the spirit of yogi berra, that <u+201c>you don<u+2019>t know until you know.<u+201d> on election day, data from real-time exit-polling firm votecastr was published throughout the day on slate and vice<u+00a0>news, predicting a clinton lead in several battleground states<u+2014>a change from traditional media practices of waiting for polls to close before releasing such information. espn<u+2019>s fivethirtyeight.com, the data-analysis site run by<u+00a0>nate silver, predicted a 71% chance of a clinton victory. in the days prior, the site gave mrs. clinton slightly lower odds of about 65%. the site<u+2019>s slightly greater caution compared with others led ryan grim, a political writer at the huffington post (which gave mrs. clinton a 99% chance of victory), to accuse mr. silver of improperly weighting his analysis in favor of mr. trump. on wednesday, mr. grim apologized. <u+201c>yes. you were right that there was far more uncertainty than we were accounting for. i apologize. gonna stick to punditry,<u+201d> mr. grim wrote on twitter. much of the media has been maligned for not being aggressive enough in its coverage of mr. trump<u+2019>s rise, business operations and questionable statements on the stump. at the same time, though, mrs. clinton<u+2019>s struggles against president barack obama in 2008 and sen. bernie sanders this year weren't seen as red flags to many of the forecasters. new york university journalism professor jay rosen wrote in a sunday night analysis that there has been a <u+201c>shift in political culture away from journalism<u+2019>s grasp<u+201d> because of mr. trump<u+2019>s ability to deflect criticism and negative reports. <u+201c>covering trump was a massive challenge,<u+201d> mr. rosen wrote. <u+201c>recovering from him may be all but impossible for the political press.<u+201d> write to joe flint at joe.flint@wsj.com and lukas i. alpert at lukas.alpert@wsj.com
how the media<u+2019>s election predictions  badly missed the mark - wsj
joe flint lukas i. alpert