It must be great to be a weather forecaster or a pollster; you can make all sorts of predictions. However, when the results are different than you predicted, you can simply say the air mass shifted or people changed their mind about who they were going to vote for at the last minute. People will still pay for your services the next time around.

I have been mildly amused with the excuses offered in the election’s aftermath. Some have claimed voters made decisions at the last minute. However, this seems unlikely considering little new information came out in the final weeks. Some argue WikiLeaks was the reason. However, few who had followed the career of Hillary Clinton would have been surprised by releases in those leaks. Others argued many Trump voters had lied to the pollsters because they were ashamed of supporting him. More likely, however, pollsters were hearing what they wanted to hear from those they wanted to hear from and not giving weight to those they did not.

Frank Ruff represents Lunenburg in the Senate. His email address is Sen.Ruff@verizon.net.