Not all of us were wrong. Some of us did not discount Donald J. Trump’s prospects of winning the US presidency. Some of us thought he performed well enough in the debates to legitimize his candidacy among wavering voters, and recognized the appeal to bitter and frustrated Americans of his proffered no-nonsense solutions to their ostensible ills. Some of us internalized the spectacular animus to Hillary Clinton — as the figurehead of a loathed establishment, and as a woman.

Not all of us placed great confidence in the opinion polls that relentlessly forecast a Clinton victory. Watching from these shores — where the reputation of public opinion surveys was battered by the wrong call in 1996 that had Shimon Peres elected prime minister, was further eroded by inaccuracies over the following two decades, and was buried with risible exit polls in 2015 that saw Isaac Herzog’s Zionist Union handsomely beating Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud — it did not seem particularly implausible that the experts had it all wrong, that their samplings were inaccurate, that too much faith was being placed in their algorithms.

But as America voted decisively on Tuesday to be led by Trump, none of that makes the result any less dramatic.

The American people have spoken, loud and clear. They have chosen, eyes wide open, a man with no political experience. But okay, he could surround himself with expertise, and could prove to have the kind of gut instinct for the right calls that made Ronald Reagan (who, of course, was not just a movie actor, but had governed California) such a successful president.

Read the full article at The Times of Israel.