Polls were wrong. I was right. Here's why.

The polls asked questions and people talked.

I watched what people did.

I alerted readers. I warned Democrats. Donald Trump was more popular than the polls suggested. 

Enthusiasm adjustment. The polls were not adequately differentiating between "yes-Trump" and "Hell-yes-Trump." There was an enthusiasm gap. Anyone could see it, in the number of yard signs, on banners on trucks, on the virulence of the social media discussions swirling. I saw enthusiasm with my own eyes, and compensated mentally for a polling error. Trump people with a big, brash in-your-face attitude have one vote like anyone else, but they are bigger influencers of the unmotivated and barely-motivated occasional voter who wouldn't show up in polls because they rarely voted, but might this time.  

Trump gear pop-up store

Democrats took comfort in the idea that Trump would boost turnout, and they were right, but it cut both ways.  

White lie adjustment.  The poll experts are now dealing with the reality that respondents lied to them. The "white lie" was to exaggerate how they really felt about COVID. Pollsters thought it was the overriding issue. I watched people come out of grocery stores and immediately remove their masks. I saw people in bars and restaurants. I talked with students eager to see friends at school. I saw that, in actual behavior, people were sick and tired of the Fauci/COVID routine and they were willing to take their chances on getting it. A one percent chance of dying didn't seem all that bad, sort of like taking the presumably-negligible risk of driving a car in fast traffic. You know accidents happen and people sometimes die in freeway crashes, but you have to get somewhere so you drive on fast freeways just like everyone else. 

Trump's language on COVID was too extreme for a lot of people but in their actual behavior they sort of agreed with him. Get out there, go back to normal, take your chances, you will probably be OK.

Masks: unnecessary bother

People want to say they do the right thing, and then we do the easy thing. We know we should eat right and exercise and floss our teeth twice a day and wash our hands for twenty full seconds repeatedly throughout the day and never drive above the speed limit and give our exact weight when we fill out forms. We know the right thing to say, but actually doing is different.

So, on voting day, a few people voted for economic growth and getting back to normal, not for Biden and COVID prudence. People who would never be in crowds and chant "Fire Fauci, Fire Fauci" still, in their behavior, demonstrated that they were tired of it all. Even seniors did, as I predicted, in Florida and Arizona. I predicted both states would vote Republican, against the polls' predictions. Arizona--called early for Biden by the networks including Fox--may actually flip back to Trump, in which case a state I predicted "incorrectly" will turn out to be right after all. In that case, if Pennsylvania's vote goes for Biden, as I predicted, and Georgia stays Republican, as I predicted, I will have been right on all fifty states.

Social Media conspiracy adjustment. There is a giant underground of email chains and rumors circulating among people who believe in extraordinary conspiracies. Even people who have professional degrees, people who are not stupid, are caught in a web of certainty that Hillary Clinton, Barrack Obama, and George Soros are actively pulling the strings of power. Hillary has not been out of power for eight years, in their view. Quite the opposite. She has been directing and undermining the hard work of President Trump from her home office in Chappaqua and wherever the International Jewish conspirators do their work. 

Material like this circulates notwithstanding warnings that the links to the private truths may be taken down shortly because internet gate-keepers find it flagrantly false and dangerous. This serves not as a warning so much as an advertisement of its secret power, the equivalent of a book having been advertised as "Banned in Boston."  The material is wrong? Crazy? Dangerous? Then hurry and circulate it before reasonable people take it down.

Here is a recent example, sent me by a retired physician, a self-described Christian, non-racist, and careful researcher of the real truth: https://www.naturalnews.com/2020-11-01-dems-collude-with-cia-operation-scorecard-alters-votes.html

How do I evaluate and measure its influence? I cannot measure it, but I observe it and recognize that people who believe this are unlikely to be captured in poll data, so I make a mental adjustment.

Bottom line: I mentally subtracted about two percent for enthusiasm, two percent for people exaggerating their actual concern over COVID, and one percent for the entrapped and mentally bunkered conspiracy people who stay underground, and that brought me to thinking that Biden would probably carry states where he had a lead of six percent, but would actually lose states where his lead was five percent or less.

That turned out to be right.