Silver, to his great credit, ultimately realized that “conventional wisdom” had infected polling. He warned about going too far in the other direction, but his basic take was that “polls may be catering to the conventional wisdom, and becoming worse as a result.” This was in 2017. He’d already had a dramatic change of view during the 2016 race. By the time the election rolled around, he was giving Trump a 29 percent chance of winning, which was higher than just about everyone else.
