Head of Investment Strategy with Perpetual Investments in Sydney, Matt Sherwood, a self-confessed US political tragic, was a little nervous yesterday.
Bucking the vast majority of commentators, he was sitting on a model which predicted a Trump victory.
“Every time I did the college vote, I kept coming up with him winning,” he told SBS.
Still, he was not entirely sure.
“I think you always have doubts when you’re predicting something like this – and especially if it’s a prediction far away from the consensus,” he said.
But as results came in from Virginia, he increasingly sure that his model was correct.
Supporters of Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton react as exit poll results arrive during an election night rally in New York city. Source: AAP
“In the last two weeks I was seeing a large and significant swing in the Midwest.”
“I tended to think that the Trump message was resonating with those voters in the rust belt – and the fact that Clinton lost those states in the primaries only helped confirm that,” he told SBS.
"Brexit and Trump are just the tip of the iceberg."
Democrats tended to think that the Midwest was their firewall, but on election night states like Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania proved vulnerable.
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Mr Sherwood’s model might have been more accurate because of its unconventional focus – on momentum rather than absolute numbers.
He told SBS he has correctly predicted the last five presidential elections.
“I don’t look at opinion poll levels per se, I look at the delta effect – which is the rate of change in the election polls,” he said.
Mr Sherwood said the opinion polls were not completely wrong. Clinton does appear to have won the popular vote nationally, but people missed the revolution underway in the Midwest in the final few weeks.
Donald Trump gives his acceptance speech surrounded by his family at his election night rally, Wednesday, Nov. 9, 2016, in New York. Source: AP
Mr Sherwood said it was a revolt driven by inequality and discontent.
“He created this myth that people coming to America were stealing the incomes and jobs of the working class – it’s not true, but he was able to get people to believe it,” he said.
“A lot of the job losses of the voters which put Trump into the White House were driven by technology,” the economics and finance expert said.
Automation, not immigration, was the real enemy of the working class.
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“You never have such high levels of inequality without some kind of revolution.
“What globalisation has done is reduce inequality between countries, but increased it within them.”
Other unconventional models have also been vindicated.
Helmut Norpoth, a political science professor at the State University of New York, said he has a model which correctly predicted the winners back to 1912, with the exception of George W. Bush in 2000.
The model analyses which of the candidates performed better in the primaries and caucuses, theorising that the stronger performer will enter the White House.
He was sticking to his guns even as opinion polls pointed to a big Clinton win.
“The model predicted a Trump win in February and nothing has changed since then. Whatever happens in the real world doesn’t affect the model,” he told the in late October.
Mr Sherwood said Trump read the mood of the nation better than Clinton.
Supporters cheer as they wait for President-elect Donald Trump to speak during his election night rally. Source: AAP
“She was the perfect candidate for him,” he told SBS.
He said Trump would have been pleased with her nomination.
“She’s the poster child of the political apparatchiks who have failed the masses in America,” he would have been thinking.
Why you didn’t hear the voices of dissent
When asked why the media so catastrophically failed to see Trump’s win coming, Matt Sherwood pauses.
“I just really don’t think they were reading the polls correctly.
“It’s the belief that the status quo would prevail, but I think we’re in the midst globally of a revolution – but Brexit and Trump are just the tip of the iceberg.
“The other thing too is there’s a really strong herd mentality in America – when one person comes out and says Clinton is going to win, everyone kind of follows,” he said.
That’s especially true in the financial world, but also true in the media and more generally, Sherwood said.
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A shining example of that herd mentality came close to Election Day, in a sparring match between two analysts.
Nate Silver, the highest profile poll analyst in the US, failed to see a Trump victory as likely – but his model did give Trump .
Mr Silver was attacked by the Huffington Post for giving Trump a one-in-three chance of winning.
Huffington Post put Clinton's odds at 98%.
The role of Facebook has also been in the spotlight, with its algorithms for determining News Feed content again criticised for creating an echo chamber within conservative and progressive online communities.
News and predictions which people didn’t want to hear were unlikely to draw likes and clicks, potentially meaning they would be pushed down by the algorithms - resulting in feeds which told both sides they were going to win.
For its part, Facebook has been defensive.
“While Facebook played a part in this election, it was just one of many ways people received their information - and was one of the many ways people connected with their leaders, engaged in the political process and shared their views,” a spokeswoman said in a statement.
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