Dear News Media, Stop Using Polls

It's time to put pollsters under the spotlight. Prior to the election, the prevailing view of the news media was that Hillary Clinton would win. As we now know, Donald Trump was able to rack up his Electoral College votes with significantly greater ease than many had imagined. What we witnessed on the night of the election was a lesson in the unreliability of polls. Instead of waiting for the electorate to cast their votes and for whatever result might come, the media seemed more intent on peddling the quack science of polling in an attempt to predict elections or predict the ways in which the electoral mood might be swaying. But time after time, polling has been exposed as a sham and deeply flawed means by which the electoral mood can be judged. There is simply no credible or justifiable method of second-guessing an election.