Larry Sabato apologized that his "Crystal Ball" predictions, which favored Hillary Clinton in the presidential election, were wrong, as were many other polls, and said the industry has to make repairs to its methods.
"My point is: Garbage in, garbage out, and we've got to change the garbage into something edible and drinkable," Sabato said.
The director of the University of Virginia's Center for Politics said, "We were wrong. The entire punditry industry, the entire polling industry, the entire analyst industry — and I want to use this opportunity to take my fair share of the blame — we were wrong," during an appearance on "Fox and Friends."
His crystal ball has shattered, Sabato joked. "That ball has shattered in a thousand pieces. I've got to order a new one, and they only make them in China."
"We, that is, the whole industry, have a lot to learn from this," Sabato said, noting that voters in some areas were not taken into account: "How is that you capture people who won't talk to pollsters, or who, maybe, will fib to pollsters?"
A wide majority of their surveys turned out to be incorrect, he said. "We plugged hundreds of surveys into our system, and over 90 percent were wrong."
The polls missed voters in rural America, he said, but noted the need to review the industry's polling methods.
"There are going to be blue-ribbon commissions and studies up the wazoo, because we need to learn exactly what went wrong. It's an industry-wide failure, and we've got to get it fixed."
The center also had access to private polls that do "background tracking," and they also predicted favorably for Clinton. Fox News' own tracking poll got it wrong, which the "Fox and Friends" hosts admitted.
Trump's win is "a spectacular event that we will be studying for the rest of our lives," Sabato said.
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