It would be impossible to pack an entire election's worth of wrongness into a single story, so we won't try. Instead, we'll just revisit 14 of the wrongest predictions about Donald Trump, from the earliest moments of his presidential campaign until Election Day.
July 13, 2015: "The chance of his winning [the] nomination and election is exactly zero." (James Fallows, the Atlantic)
July 17, 2015: "Donald Trump is not going to be the next president of the United States. This reporter is already on record pledging to eat a bag of rusty nails if the real estate tycoon with the high hair manages to snag the GOP nomination, much less takes down likely Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton next fall." (Ben White, CNBC)
July 19, 2015: "Trump is toast after insult: 'McCain not a war hero.' " (New York Post cover)
Donald Trump says Sen. John McCain is "not a war hero" and "a loser" http://t.co/UAyy8APgHH pic.twitter.com/cR7vgfDfuh
— New York Post (@nypost) July 19, 2015
Aug. 11, 2015: "Our emphatic prediction is simply that Trump will not win the nomination. It's not even clear that he’s trying to do so." (Nate Silver, FiveThirtyEight)
Aug. 26, 2015: "Donald Trump is going to lose because he is crazy." (Jonathan Chait, New York Magazine)
Sept. 22, 2015: "Historians looking back will peg the beginning of the end of the Trump show to his New Hampshire moment last week." (Arianna Huffington, Huffington Post)
June 17, 2016: "Over the last two decades, American presidential elections have all been relatively close. But with Donald Trump at the helm, the Republican Party faces the prospect of a historic landslide closer to the creamings received by Barry Goldwater in 1964 (who lost by 23.6 points), George McGovern in 1972 (24.2 percentage points), and Walter Mondale in 1984 (19.4 percentage points). At this point, the only real question appears to be how huge (or beautiful — pick your Trumpian adjective) the margin will be." (Jeet Heer, New Republic)
Aug. 15, 2016: "That's a guy who knows he is going to lose. That's a guy who knows he is going to lose. You start talking that way and, again, I don't know that he's ever wanted to win. It's sad. It's sad and pathetic what's going on out there." (Joe Scarborough, MSNBC)
Oct. 18, 2016: "The good news: He will lose this election badly, by which I mean poorly. Exceedingly poorly. ... He will lose the popular vote, and he will lose the electoral vote." (Jim Nelson, GQ)
Oct. 20, 2016: "Hillary Clinton finished Donald Trump in the final debate of the presidential election.
"Consider the evidence of the polls going into Wednesday — which show Clinton bordering on a landslide victory — and Trump's inability or unwillingness to overcome his defects as a campaigner. There's no other conclusion. We are now playing out the string. And the only question left after the debate is whether Trump and his hard-core supporters will accept his defeat." (Michael Brendan Dougherty, the Week)
Nov. 6, 2016: "I tweeted about this yesterday, but I’m gonna put the take here because maybe you’re already freaking out about Tuesday and starting to drink heavily. Here’s the deal: Donald Trump is going to get his a-- kicked. Anyone who says otherwise is either a) afraid of jinxing it and/or making Hillary Clinton voters complacent (understandable); b) afraid of being wrong (Nate Silver); c) supporting Trump; or d) interested in making this a “horse race” for the sake of maintaining public interest (most of the television media, along with grotesque s---bags like Mark Halperin). But this isn’t close, and never was." (Drew Magary, Deadspin)
Nov. 8, 2016: "Hillary Clinton has an 85 percent chance to win." (Upshot)
Nov. 8, 2016: "Throughout the election, our forecast models have consistently come to two conclusions. First, that Hillary Clinton was more likely than not to become the next president. And second, that the range of possible Electoral College outcomes — including the chance of a Donald Trump victory, but also a Clinton landslide that could see her winning states such as Arizona — was comparatively wide.
"That remains our outlook today in our final forecast of the year. Clinton is a 71 percent favorite to win the election according to our polls-only model and a 72 percent favorite according to our polls-plus model." (Nate Silver, FiveThirtyEight)