In 2016, the majority of outlets gave Clinton a 90% chance or more. This time almost everyone said it was 50:50. The result is somewhat similar, the predictions could hardly be more different.
For one, they said Clinton had a 70% chance of winning.
But perhaps more importantly, people's poor understanding of stats meant that many people interpreted that as "She's going to get 70% of the vote" (i.e., a landslide, "and so I don't need to vote").
Whilst this is objectively true - this result is basically within the margin of error of most polls. I highly doubt this argument is going to be accepted by most people. It'll be exactly like Nate Silver screaming into the void for the last 8 years pointing out he gave Trump a ~30% chance of winning and that happens... 30% of the time!
This isn’t an interesting statement. I could pull any numbers out of a hat in (0, 1) as probabilities and regardless of the outcome could use the same excuse because there is only a single event to observe.
In 2016, the majority of outlets gave Clinton a 90% chance or more. This time almost everyone said it was 50:50. The result is somewhat similar, the predictions could hardly be more different.