Why Botched Election Predictions Don't Herald the End of Data Journalism

On  Tuesday night, newsrooms around the world got a pretty rude reminder that good data is very important.

Before polls opened for the U.S. presidential election, Nate Silver and his colleagues at FiveThirtyEight put the likelihood of a Hillary Clinton victory north of 70 percent; the New York Times put her likelihood higher still, above 80 percent; less than a week before the election, the startup Morning Consult and Politico published research that suggested “shy Trump voters,” while a real thing, were not numerous enough to tilt the odds in his favor.

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