I created this lecture for my Baruch and Rutgers classes but figured it really ought to be online. While preparing this deck, noticed the cathectic emotion, even though it is impossible to capture everything that has happened.

1. Some of - What Went
Right and Wrong
on November 8th,
2016 US Election
Marshall Sponder, WebMetricsGuru INC

2. Polls weren’t accurate enough
The Drama of
this election is
finally over!
Wrong

3. Oversampling of
Likely Democratic
voters in
favorable districts
to Clinton was a
common feature
of most polls
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ZdmdxzW9ew
Many of the pollsters were
working with, or for, the
MSM outlets colluding with
the Democratic Party, or the
Clintons, directly – WikiLeaks
has a lot of evidence of news
collusion.
Wrong

4. Clinton's Pied
Piper
Strategy (use
media
contacts to
promote
Trump) has
backfired
spectacularly
https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/1120 Looked Right – but it backfired

5. This Election Was Not The 'The Death Of Data:' Filter
Bubbles And Analysis
• Filter bubble also applies to the forecasters who
are just picking the data they want to see and
using it as your measurement of the world, and
that has not really been talked about very
much.
• It would also explain why most of the polls
excepting for the two sided below were
incorrect or totally off.
• This pretty much sums up what the state of
election forecasting is today, as well as its
limitations.
• Also, I followed the two polls that were more
accurate and wondered why the real clear
politics average uses polls that were flawed to
begin with.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/kalevleetaru/2016/11/11/no-this-election-was-not-the-the-death-of-data-filter-bubbles-and-
analysis/#5077f050194e
Wrong

6. Trump Win Exposes
Media's Smug Failures
• Ads don’t work, polls don’t work,
celebrities don’t work, media
endorsements don’t work and ground
games don’t work.
• It all washed away. Beyonce. The tax
returns. The theoretical blue wall. Trump
as sexual predator. Putin. His shambolic
debate performances. Hispanics. Indeed,
every aspect of the media narrative, dust.
This narrative not only did not diminish
him, it fortified him.
• The criticism of Trump defined the people
who were criticizing him, reliably giving
the counter-puncher something to punch.
It was a juicy target. The Media Party not
only fashioned the takedown narrative
and demanded a special sort of allegiance
to it — Twitter serving as the orthodoxy
echo chamber — but, suspending most
ordinary conflict rules, according to the
Center for Public Integrity, gave lots of
cash to Hillary. The media turned itself
into the opposition and, accordingly, was
voted down.
Wrong

7. https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/796209661456347136
Right

8. WHAT’S REALLY
WRONG WITH
THE POLLING?
http://odintext.com/blog/whats-really-wrong-with-polling/
How could so many projections have
been so far off the mark?
Wrong

9. Dr. Sam Wang, a
polling expert who
said he would eat
a bug if Donald
Trump won more
than 240 electoral
votes during
Tuesday's election
has made good on
that promise on
Saturday
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3930698/Polling-expert-eats-bug-settle-bet-against-Trump-s-shocking-election-result.html
Right

10. Our analysis strongly suggested that Hillary
Clinton was in more trouble than any of the
other polling data to that point indicated.
• The Real Problem with Polls
• Well, I can’t say I told you so, because what I wrote was a colossal
understatement; however, this experience has reinforced my conviction
that conventional quantitative Likert-scale survey questions—the sort
used in every poll—are generally not terrific predictors of actual
behavior.
• If I ask you a series of questions with a set of answers or a ratings scale
I’m not likely to get a response that tells me anything useful.
• We know that consumers (and, yes, voters) are generally not rational
decision-makers; people rely on emotions and heuristics to make most of
our decisions.
• If I really want to understand what will drive actual behavior, the surest
way to find out is by allowing you to tell me unaided, in your own
words, off the top of your head.
• “How important is price to you on a scale of 1-10?” is no more likely to
predict actual behavior than “How important is honesty to you in a
president on a scale of 1-10?”
• It applies to cans of tuna and to presidents.
http://odintext.com/blog/whats-really-wrong-with-polling/
Wrong

11. Nate Silver Blew It three times in a row
(2014 US, 2014 UK and 2016 US) on the
Election – Can His Brand Recover? NO
“Nate was arrogant. His numbers were all over the place. The
title of ‘guru’ is now gone,” The Hill media reporter Joe
Concha told TheWrap. He said Silver’s career will survive, but
“never again will he be held in any revered regard.”
On Monday, Silver predicted that Trump had a 1-in-3 chance
of defeating Hillary Clinton. Some other pundits thought Silver
was being too generous: Huffington Post Washington bureau
chief Ryan Grim accused him of “putting his thumb on the
scales” to give Trump a better chance of wining.
(Grim tweeted an apology to Silver on Election Night, saying
there was “far more uncertainty than we were accounting
for.”)
By Tuesday morning, Silver’s site reported that Clinton had a
71.4 percent chance of winning the election.Wrong

12. Twitter Facial
Analysis Reveals
Demographics of
Presidential
Campaign Followers
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/601074/twitter-facial-analysis-reveals-demographics-of-presidential-campaign-
followers/
Not sure this helped anyone

13. Following Donald Trump's election,
the war against algorithms began
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdCJYsKlX_Y
For marketers,
the algorithimization of the web
has been a fact of life for years.
Right

14. For marketers,
the algorithimization of the
web has been a fact of life
for years.
• Success or failure on the web will in large part
be determined by algorithms marketers don't
control, or their ability to understand and
make the most of them.
• Google has escaped a Microsoft-like
crackdown, perhaps in part because
marketers themselves are an unfavorable lot
to regulators and the public.
• Many are accusing Facebook's algorithm of
helping Donald Trump win the election he
wasn't expected to win by allowing
misinformation to be widely spread across its
network. Throughout the election, fake
stories, sometimes papered over with flimsy
“parody site” disclosures somewhere in small
type, circulated throughout Facebook: The
Pope endorses Trump. Hillary Clinton bought
$137m in illegal arms. The Clintons bought a
$200m house in the Maldives.
WikiLeaks: Clintons Purchase $200 Million Maldives Estate
BY SHADY GROVE | 108 COMMENTS
67.9K931
Wrong

15. Clinton’s data-driven campaign
relied heavily on
an algorithm named Ada.
What didn’t she see?
A raft of polling numbers, public and private, were fed into the
algorithm, as well as ground-level voter data meticulously collected by
the campaign. Once early voting began, those numbers were factored
in, too.
What Ada did, based on all that data, aides said, was run 400,000
simulations a day of what the race against Trump might look like. A
report that was spit out would give campaign manager Robby Mook
and others a detailed picture of which battleground states were most
likely to tip the race in one direction or another — and guide decisions
about where to spend time and deploy resources. (they probably lost
their way here)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/11/09/clintons-data-driven-campaign-relied-heavily-on-an-algorithm-named-ada-what-didnt-she-see/
Wrong

16. Bad Trade Deals –
The more we know,
the worse it looks
• The TPP are a corporate lobbyist’s dream.
• Get the world’s most powerful corporations together to
make a wish list of rule changes.
• Bundle them into an international agreement of
thousands of pages of technical legal text that few
people are likely to read.
• Call it a free-trade agreement and promise that it will
create jobs, grow economies, and bring the world
together.
• Include a provision that foreign corporations can sue a
signatory government for any loss of anticipated profits
due to government action.
• Require that these claims be decided by secret
international tribunals composed of three private-
sector attorneys; preclude review of the awards they
grant.
• Push the agreement through the national legislative
bodies of the prospective member nations under rules
that limit debate, prohibit amendments, and require a
simple up-or-down majority vote.
http://www.commondreams.org/views/2016/03/27/thing-sanders-trump-and-clinton-agree-its-bad
Right

17. As a result of the
Election, TPP is no
longer going to be
enacted and other
trade deals may be
renegotiated
Right

18. Then there
was this!
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3928032/Huma-breaks-weeps-openly-returns-campaign-headquarters-aides-ran-
doomed-bid-elect-Hillary-Clinton.html
Wrong

19. If there was anything that
would “Freak Out”
Evangelicals, this would!
#Spiritcooking
Wrong

20. #Spiritcooking
was in the
hashtags
associated
with Wikileaks
http://hashtagify.me/hashtag/spiritcooking

21. #Spiritcooking
emerged on
11/4/16 and
dominated the
weekend before
the election
http://hashtagify.me/hashtag/spiritcooking

22. WikiLeaks
dominated the
US election in
October 2016
according to
Facebook
statistics
Right
https://insights.fb.com/category/hot-topics/region/united-states/

23. The Podesta Emails published by WikiLeaks
balanced Clinton’s MSM collusion making it easier for Donald Trump to win.
http://dailycaller.com/2016/11/07/the-44-most-damning-stories-from-wikileaks/Right

24. FBI reopens
Clinton probe
after new
emails found
in Anthony
Weiner case –
then closed it
again 2 days
before the
election.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2016/10/28/fbi-reopens-investigation-into-clinton-email-use.html
Wrong

25. The 44 Most
Damning Stories
From WikiLeaks
http://dailycaller.com/2016/11/07/the-44-most-damning-stories-from-wikileaks
Right

26. Hillary Clinton supporters at her election night event in New York.
Wrong

27. It was the biggest polling miss in a presidential
election in decades.
It was the biggest polling miss in
a presidential election in decades.
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/11/13/upshot
/putting-the-polling-miss-of-2016-in-
perspective.html?_r=0
Wrong

28. Only the IBD/TIPP Poll and the L.A. Times/USC poll
had Trump ahead on Election Day.
Right

29. The IBD/TIPP Poll and the L.A. Times/USC poll
were the only accurate polls, as it turned out.
http://cesrusc.org/election/
Right

30. Finding out Why: Using Brandwatch Analytics determines the Top
Stories from Wikileaks over the last 2 months
1. Clintons Paid Wall Street Speeches - https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/11011
(69,216 Tweets)
2. 2016 GOP presidential candidates Strategy Call (Pied Pier Strategy) – April 7, 2015 -
https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/1120 (37,249 Tweets)
3. Heads Up to Justice Dept. to HRC – Peter Kadzik - https://wikileaks.org/podesta-
emails/emailid/43150#efmABWAB8ACiACqACvADUADXAIF (36,000 Tweets)
4. Photo/Tweet of Full Transcripts of Clinton’s Goldman Sachs Private Speeches -
https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/787343422227091457/photo/1 (35,700 Tweets)
5. Re: Princeton Study: U.S. No Longer An Actual Democracy – (25,300 Tweets) -
https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/3723#efmAMnANJANLAN9
6. Last Night – Apple gives governments device information despite strong encryption -
https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/30593#efmAHtANd
7. POTUS on HRC’s Emails (“we need to clean this up”) – (25,000 Tweets) -
https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/31077#efmAAGABT

31. Crimson Hexagon
Monitor – Who
will win the
Election – Clinton
or Trump? Run
before, during
and after the
Election
https://forsight.crimsonhexagon.com/ch/opinion/results?id=4520674828#topicWheel?id=4520674828&start=20
16-10-27&end=2016-11-
13&collapsed=&ungraphed=&drilldownKey=&scale=NONE&authorsHidden=&sortByTwitter=undefined&sortTwit
Dir=undefined&catId=&emotionId=&score=&range=&daily=&monitorsToCompare=4520674828&categoriesToCo
mpare=&newStartDates=&catMixShowHidden=false&settings=&groupBy=&topicId=&affinitiesCompareStart=und
efined&affinitiesCompareEnd=undefined&skipCache=false&postTimezone=&affinitiesDocumentSource=&x=4532
83851236

32. Students
helped define
the Crimson
Hexagon
Monitors
which
pointed the
way to a
Trump win.

33. Crimson Hexagon Topic Waves picked by AI

34. EMOTION: Anger

35. EMOTION: Joy

36. EMOTION:
Disgust

37. EMOTION:
Sadness

38. EMOTION: Surprise[–]timmyjj2 1 point 12 days ago*
Markets according to insiders who know this told CNBC the market is pricing in a >60% chance he
pulls it out. The Mexican peso is telling the tale, 4% drop in the peso to the dollar after the
ABC poll dropped.http://www.xe.com/currencycharts/?from=USD&to=MXN

39. Fear of Trump was the strongest emotion detected
and peaked a few times shortly before the election

40. Expected
turnout was low,
and this chart
suggests some
reasons why.

41. Crimson Hexagon Swing State Opinion Monitor set up just before the election

42. Prediction: High End Technology (Targeting) is
in a “Bubble”.
The Technology did not deliver what was intended for the Clinton team or the DNC
for at least a few reasons I can think off offhand, and a few more that will probably
pop up, later.
• 1 – The Targeting Technology and Data Science were applied by the DNC with
assumptions that were incorrect (Garbage in, Garbage out).
• The technology is flawed and still immature.
• Better to have “No Data” than “Bad Data” or “Incorrect Assumptions”
• 2 – No technology can fully compensate for bad content or a deficient candidate!

43. Facebook
Mobile
Data Up To
80%
Inaccurate
Rakuten Marketing engineers uncovered a measurement flaw in Omniture, Google Analytics,
Coremetrics and other analytics packages that measure the click-through rates (CTRs) and
cost per clicks (CPCs) for Facebook mobile campaigns.
Attributable revenue only comprised on average 5.6% of the total revenue generated across mobile-
only, desktop-only and cross-device campaigns -- and as little as 2.4% for one retailer in the
study.
Don’t we rely on mobile targeting more and
more for hyper precision targeting and even,
Programmatic? What if its all a “Bubble”?
http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/288721/

44. Summary: The Filter Bubble for Analysts and Pollsters is as
skewed as it is for the entire population
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/sep/29/trump-clinton-media-left-right-democracy