In the 1970's I worked on a big statewide race in Illinois - our guy

[Southsideirish]

started dropping off more and more in the polls yet as this happened the "insiders" grew more defensive and combative about the lower numbers and kept hyping up his candidacy. I was just a "newby" then and couldn't understand how the newspapers kept saying he was losing yet the important honchos in the campaign would go nuts if we lowly worker bees repeated anything we read.
Our guy lost and I felt it was mainly due to the fact that the people running the campaign wouldn't face reality and try to change course.