To the editor: Robin Abcarian's column on pre-election polls was another excellent post of hers.

What people forget is that in 2016, most major polls were essentially correct. These polls did not predict that Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton would win this election; They simply reflected the fact that she was ahead by about 3.5 points just before election day. Furthermore, these polls were conducted before then-FBI Director James Comey's October surprise was fully established.

It should also be remembered that Clinton won the popular vote by 2.1 percentage points but lost the Electoral College vote to Donald Trump.

Also interesting about 2016 is the popular belief that one of the only accurate major polls was the USC/LA Times poll, in which Clinton lost by just over three points. In other words, according to conventional wisdom, a poll that was off by more than five percentage points was right, while the other polls that were off by an average of about 1.5 points were wrong.

Poll derangement syndrome, in fact.

Fred Gober, Playa Vista

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To the editor: The 2016 polls were completely wrong. However, I wasn't surprised when Clinton lost.

I voted for her and wanted her to win, but when she called a large number of Trump's supporters “deplorable people” I cringed because that implied complete disrespect. Perhaps it was clever, but it led to something worse than just political disagreements; These words broke “we the people” into “us against them.”

And then came the conspiracy theories and attempts to destroy our democracy with threats and lies.

There is a saying that it is easy to deceive people, but it is almost impossible to convince them that they have been deceived. Still, I see that many Americans on both sides of the fence are willing to forgo our differences and work to protect our democracy and freedoms because we love our country and our families.

Ina Scott, Lancaster

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To the editor: Abcarian missed an important point.

The premise of her article was that political polls have become unreliable in recent election cycles. She pointed out that Clinton was well ahead of Trump in polls in 2016, shortly before she lost the election. Polls in 2020 showed President Biden much further ahead of Trump than the actual vote count showed.

Their explanation for these discrepancies was the pollsters' failure to measure the educational levels of white voters. I think it's much easier.

I think there is a large group of supposedly “undecided” voters who are simply too embarrassed to admit to a pollster that they intend to vote for an orange, thug candidate.

Dean Simpson, Visalia, California.