Polls show Trump winning key swing states. That’s partly a failure of the press

‘Do these poll respondents know as much about Trump’s authoritarian blueprints as they do about how Biden walks these days with a stiffer gait?’ Photograph: Alyssa Pointer/Reuters

I learned the hard way to be skeptical about the predictive power of public opinion polls.

I remember election night 2016 all too well, as I hit delete on my partially pre-written Washington Post column and instead tried to look into the future of a Trump presidency. It was a future that wasn’t supposed to happen.