Did the results of Tuesday’s election surprise you? Did you stay up until late at night, rubbing your disbelieving eyes?

You weren’t alone.

Even most data savvy journalists and the country’s biggest Trump supporters were caught by surprise. Some found the surprise quite pleasant, others found it jarring.

Yet at a moment where everyone agrees America is as divided as it has been since the Civil War, why is it a surprise that neither side could hear what the other was saying?

In reality, the difference between a Trump win and a Clinton victory was about 2 percentage points. That was enough to tip Florida, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin to the Republican, thus giving him the election. Most data on Election Day eve showed those states were hovering on razor-thin margins, yet most analysis of the race leaned on the fact that Clinton only had to win two of those states to take the White House. Establishment thinkers couldn’t comprehend that Clinton might not win two of them, and that Trump had a gambler’s chance at winning the race. Something was lost between the data on the page and the thought process of a person who may not have spoken to many Trump supporters.

The division in American is accurate, and it’s not just political.

There is physical division — just take a look at the electoral map. Liberals are gathering in population centers and along the coasts. Conservatives in rural areas and the South and Rust Belt. There is generational division, too, as well as a division in education, gender and race.

The media, which is tasked with explaining and bridging that division, has fallen flat. Too much of the campaign coverage dealt with the entertaining but ultimately superficial horse race nature of it — who was up and who was down. Real dissection of policy, and really listening to voters, was noticeably absent.

On the face of it, the near infinite number of online news outlets should help disseminate truth, right? You no longer need a printing press to dissect policy or bullhorn the stories of average Americans. At the very least, there is plenty of space available to check facts.

Farhad Manjoo recently wrote an article in the New York Times titled: “How the internet is loosening our grip on the truth.” He argues that while the internet offers plenty of sources of information, it also offers plenty of sources of disinformation. And it makes it difficult to tell the difference between the two.

“Psychologists and other social scientists have repeatedly shown that when confronted with diverse information choices, people rarely act like rational, civic-minded automatons,” he wrote. “Instead, we are roiled by preconceptions and biases, and we usually do what feels easiest — we gorge on information that confirms our ideas, and we shun what does not.”

Online businesses are dependent on clicks — not the truth — and too often people click on what they want to believe instead of what they should believe. When we silo ourselves around friendly information and people who share our view of the world, we do ourselves a disservice. And we set ourselves up for that shocking moment when we peek out of our silo and see that the rest of our state, country or world is different than we thought.

As we’ve argued in this space previously, it takes a stronger kind of person to confront facts that challenge their opinions. It is much easier to lend credence to vague conspiracies, to throw rocks at the wall of truth instead of doing the backbreaking work of building your own with supporting facts and studies and impassioned defense. Build that wall, Mr. Trump.

Media is, generally, conservative. And we mean conservative with a small c. We’re biased toward long resumes, established practices, data that proves the point and historical comparisons. We’re cynical of big promises without proof, we don’t take a candidate’s word for it, and we’re wary of leaping without looking.

Like you, we are invested in our philosophy, our view and hope for the world. But filling that arsenal with facts, admitting mistakes and sensing advantage is the way to move forward, win over skeptics and restore trust and truth.