So what the hell happened in the election?

It will surprise no one that I have opinions, for what they are worth -- not much. I've read dozens of takes on why pre-election polls overestimated Joe Biden's margins in many states by 8-10 points -- plus why they failed to catch that in states Trump carried, Democratic Senate candidates couldn't bring the election home. 

As a smart friend said: "The narrative that pops up right after seems to take on a life of its own." So true. Heck, all of us on the west coast have been through a collective experience of this during both 2018 and 2020. Because of which races are called early in an election evening, it did not become apparent that 2018 was a wildly successful "blue wave" until after the east coast had gone to bed; it took several days for the punditry to catch up to the reality of Democratic success. In 2020, because Florida was called early and strongly for Trump, the evening of November 3 felt as if we were repeating the horror of 2016 -- until Fox News called Arizona for Biden. This call probably was a stretch at the time, but it has held up and it reassured me then. By morning, a more Democratic pattern had emerged. 

If you live on the west coast, you have to get used to this.

Then there are exit polls. It's always worth taking exit polls with a pound of salt. If you'd been waiting in line for hours to vote, would you talk with some kid with a clip board? Probably only if you were a highly engaged voter. This year, when we're avoiding close contact with each other and when more than half of us voted by mail anyway, exit polls seem obviously suspect.

I do think there is something to David Shor's conclusion that people who have "low social trust" aren't talking to pollsters -- and that means there were plenty of infrequent and non-voters, usually "white working class" ones, whose intentions would seldom be captured in a poll. Because I've actually worked on too many elections, I've talked with lots of these people. An experienced canvasser learns to discern the difference between "I'm not going to tell you who I'm for," "I'm for your guy, I guess ...," "I'm just shining you on because it's fun to talk to some poor schmuck," and "get out of here before I set my dog on you." Any of them may be open to voting in your direction -- or, more likely at that moment, none may be. You keep working to bring in the possibles, and give the impossible ones a wide berth.

I also think Shor is correct that "Voters are now determining their opinions about parties in a unified way and not reading about individual local candidates." The internet and the sheer tedium of the permanent campaign does that. I don't think most voters have a glimmer about what policies they are voting for when they choose candidates. This is hard for Democrats because on many "issues" like gun control and health care, polls show most of the electorate on our side. But mostly voters just gravitate toward the brand that feels congenial. I do think there is power in a good messenger offering hope as well as fear. But we have to recognize that the GOPers sure do well with the latter. It might be hard for lefties to see, but there were a lot of people for whom Biden was a messenger of hope.

Finally, my preferred take on what happened on November 3 comes from Marcos Moulitas, that's kos, the founder of the Democratic site, Daily Kos. He writes as an elections warrior more than as a data guy, and this rings true to me:

The reason the polls were off: the Hidden Deplorable  

The polls were off in 2016.
The polls were right in 2018.
The polls were off in 2020.

The difference? Donald Trump.

In 2016 and 2020, Republicans overperformed the polling, primarily by turnout of more people than any models expected. This is particularly striking in 2020 given that Democratic turnout was also bonkers. It didn’t matter. There’s legitimately a hidden deplorable vote for Trump, one that only has turned out when Trump himself is on the ballot.

If kos is right, perhaps the "deplorable vote" -- potential voters uniquely motivated to tear it all down behind their cult leader -- doesn't turn out in Georgia in the Senate run-offs set for January 5. Meanwhile, Jon Ossoff, Rev. Rafael Warnock, and Stacey Abrams are sure going to work to win these races to go along with the Biden-Harris victory.