The pollsters were predicting a close election. That was universally the message. It was unambiguous. I'm sorry if you somehow missed that but that's what it was.
They were predicting 50% odds of each candidate winning swing states, but with the results for the swing states being correlated with each other. This isn't the same as a close election, it just means the result can't be predicted confidently. It's also worth noting that each individual state and the popular vote were within error margins on the result.
