All the dazzling technology, the big data and the sophisticated modelling that American newsrooms bring to the fundamentally human endeavour of presidential politics could not save American journalism from yet again being behind the story, behind the rest of the country.
The news media by and large missed what was happening all around it, and it was the story of a lifetime. The numbers weren't just a poor guide for election night - they were an off-ramp away from what was actually happening.