Should we have expected this result?

[Lothal1]

Looking at the 2014 Results, some of Trump's results were near exact as 2014. See Iowa. Joni Ernst won the same areas as Trump. In Maine, Wisconsin, Florida, and Ohio almost all of the results are identical to Trump's. Should we have expected this from the start?

[AGA]

Should we have? Of course, it happened. The polls weren't accurate in many states, though.

[Sir Mohamed]

No, because midterms = / = presidential elections.

Examples: 2010 and 2012. 1982 and 1984. 1970 and 1972. 1954 and 1956. In every case, the president's party lost (in some cases by a big margin), but later won convincingly.

[BoAtlantis]

Didn't expect it but I'm not that surprised by it either.

538 did give few small possibilities that ended up being accurate.

1) EC and PV split, and if so, in Trump's favor
2) Trump had a huge upside in the Midwest because of his appeal to non-college whites, which make up a large % in the region

As OP said, Ernst in Iowa

3) Close senate race in PA. Scott Walker in WI. Bernie's monumental upset in MI.
ME 2nd district being competitive for the first time.
4) Many Trump signs in rural and suburbs (anecdotal); Hillary not being able to draw crowds except Philly and maybe few more.
5) 8 years incumbency leads independent voters to flip bigly
6) Brexit fever

And goes on...

[Meclazine for Israel]

It was a two horse race.

Should we be able to predict the winner of the New England Patriots vs Cleveland Browns.

We have a fair idea, but in the day, Cleveland could pull an upset.

Trump's win was an upset.

[Pericles]

I think Hillary was the favorite but people should have anticipated that Trump's win was a real possibility. I think 538 did a good job with that.

[Horus]

I always expected it, and thought a Trump win was likely.

[mistertheplague]

Nope. Hit me like I'd stepped out in front of a bus.

[bandg]

The drop in black turnout we could see coming for quite a while. It goes a long way in explaining how Clinton lost PA, MI, WI. The loss of non-college educated white voters in these states was the other factor of course. 

[Reaganfan]

One thing that the media keeps getting wrong is that they keep saying "rural" in describing the regions that took Trump over the line. I actually think it was suburban areas.

White people are WAY less politically correct. So grabbing by the you-know-what was excused in a Bill Clinton-type manner. (Meh, we kinda figured that anyways...it was 11 years ago, private conversation, ect)

The only people moved by it were extreme PC people, feminists, and well...Hillary Clinton voters.

[Mr. Smith]

Yes, yes we should've.

Maybe not in the entirety, but something of the sort as soon as.

A) Sanders did way better than expected

B) The GOP couldn't connive a way to get Kasich the delegates (Kasich vs Clinton would've looked like 1988) to steal it from trump.

C) The midterm happened as it did (with the exceptions of 1986 and 1998, the second midterm seems to guarantee the opposition will regain what's lost)

D) The last time the cycle started off with the opposition having a mass of candidates while the other only had 2, and one of them had baggage, the opposition nominee ended up coming out strong because of all the things that had to be weaved around. When I saw all those names, I knew there'd be trouble for Hillary...I admit I made the mistake of assuming Scott Walker or Marco Rubio would be that person for a while.

E) Hillary always seemed to rise and fall based on something Trump did rather than by anything she did, which usually hurt her.

F) Only George HW Bush and Hoover in the past 100 years broke the 8 year curse [excluding FDR], and they got really effing dirty and nasty to do it, Hillary's campaign wasn't willing to truly get nasty  (sorry but the "Deplorables" thing was not enough).

G) Minority turnout (and to an extent, turnout in general, which had to be through the roof, not lower [as it appeared on election night] or roughly the same as 2012)

H) Brexit, Duterte, and a general Alt-right rise going on.


Ya' know what, I take it back...we shouldn't have expected this result, we should've expected Trump to do even better than he did, and Ayotte and Johnson should've had opposite outcomes.

[Xing]

Considered it a real possibility? Yes. Expected it? Eh, given the information we had at the time, and looking at the big picture, it was reasonable to assume that Clinton was favored. Even if there were signs of Trump possibly doing better than expected, it's just much easier for us to see that now. People whose "gut" told them that Trump would win shouldn't be assuming that they should always trust their gut in the future. Gut feelings are always right until they aren't.