Why are public opinion polls failing?

Then AAPOR gets to the real nitty-gritty. "There are a number of reasons as to why polls under-estimated support for Trump" with the three main reasons – excuses – being:

Real change in vote preference during the final week or so of the campaign, adjusting for over-representation of college graduates was critical, but many polls did not do it and some Trump voters who participated in pre-election polls did not reveal themselves as Trump voters until after the election, and they outnumbered late-revealing Clinton voters.

In its heroic defence of its members' failures, AAPOR states:

A spotty year for election polls is not an indictment of all survey research or even all polling.

Describing monumental failures as spotty is certainly creative. I'm surprised AAPOR didn't publish a poll "proving" that 97.93% of Americans thought that public opinion polls were God's honest revealed truth.

And, again addressing another key nitty-gritty question:

About those polls that Clinton was 90 percent likely to win AAPOR bravely asserts. However well-intentioned these predictions may have been, they helped crystallize the belief that Clinton was a shoo-in for president, with unknown consequences for turnout.

It's as close to an admission that pollsters shot themselves in the foot that AAPOR will come.

AAPOR still struggles with the fact that Trump won asserting "Donald Trump's victory in the 2016 presidential election came as a shock to pollsters, political analysts, reporters and pundits". Well, yes it certainly did come as a shock to the overwhelming majority of these people whose natural inclination was for Clinton. They could not – or would not – countenance the idea that they might be wrong. This admission by AAPOR inadvertently reveals a deep-seated hostility to Trump and a sublime belief in their own particular prejudices. None of this lot would have been among those voters dismissed and denigrated by Clinton as deplorables.

The media doesn't escape criticism: for example, "The pattern in early voting in key states were described in numerous, high profile news stories as favorable for Clinton, particularly in Florida and North Carolina. Trump won both states". So sloppy, unprofessional journalism is to blame as well, right? The AAPOR is silent on whether or not this media bias towards Clinton so aggravated likely Trump supporters that they flocked to vote late in the day.

In what could point to some possible outcomes in Australia both for the same sex postal ballot and the possible appeal of One Nation and other minor parties, the report determined that voters with higher levels of formal education tended to be Clinton supporters and that these elites were more likely to respond to surveys than people with lower levels of education. Post election, this was called the "shy Trump" factor. The fact is however low their level of education these deplorables as Clinton disparaged them know when they are being told what to think and what to do by those who consider themselves their betters.

Recent years have not been all that wonderful for polling organisations around the world.