The closer the November 8 general election approaches the more voters are bombarded, and confused, by political polls.
Taken at face value, political polls are regarded as useful tools to give voters an idea how particular candidates, and/or a political party are doing approaching an election date. These polls normally have significant influence on voters who use them to gauge how they should vote.
But in recent years, political polls in America, and other countries, have been awfully wrong. As a result, political polls have been losing credibility. Voters should be mindful not to be too dependent on them as a voting guide.
Infamously, prior to the presidential election of 2016, polls tended to be in sync that Hillary Clinton would win the presidential election with anywhere from three to ten percentage points. The result was sharply off. Clinton lost the presidency by two percent in electoral votes, despite winning the popular vote by over three percent.
Similarly in the 2020 general election the average of several polls had Joe Biden winning by larger margins than he eventually won by. Several polls had Biden winning Florida, a state he lost by a significant margin on election day.
It has been several years since reliable political polls like the Gallup Poll accurately predicted the outcome of elections. Over recent years political polling has developed into something of a very competitive industry. Countless competing polls, including media polls, are published almost daily. Frankly, voters have a difficult time knowing which poll is more accurate, because none seem to be.
Today, there is genuine concern regarding the integrity of existing polls. Political polls, like any other opinion survey are required to be conducted scientifically. People questioned in the poll should be selected by a specific sample of voters, weighted to specific factors like race, age, employment status, income, gender, and zip code. From this broad sample, the potential survey targets should be randomly selected by established guidelines. From the final filtered sample, the poll is then conducted, either by phone, mail, face-to-face, or today, via the Internet.
But it’s seriously doubtful if polls are being conducted based on scientifically selected samples. Often scientific samples take some time to finalize. But the frequency in which some of the current polls are conducted make it near impossible for them to be conducted based on scientific sampling.
Another factor that’s challenging the integrity of political polling is the absence of telephone landlines. In the past it was easier for political pollsters to select polling samples from a physical book, a telephone directory. Printed telephone directories are almost obsolete, as the majority of consumers have cancelled their landlines opting for cellphones. There’s no publicly available cellphone directory, although it may be possible to get directories of customers from respective cell-phone companies.
Since cell phones have a caller ID feature, consumers hardly answer calls from numbers with which they are unfamiliar. Often calls from pollsters are interpreted as another annoying solicitation call and go unanswered. Moreover, when pollsters do get an answer through a cellphone or landline, there’s a tendency for the pollster to be cut off as some people just don’t want to be bothered. A representative of a popular polling company told this newspaper the contact rate of polling calls averages some ten percent.
Another negative factor is pollsters cannot be certain as to the reliability of the response to polling question. Some people deliberately give pollsters responses contrary to how they actually vote.
The fact that over 40 percent of American voters are registered as Independent also diminishes the accuracy of polls. Independent voters are vulnerable to political messages and circumstances and change their minds frequently before voting. They are woefully unreliable when it comes to the accuracy of their voting choice.
It’s suspected some pollsters deliberately skillfully skew polls to influence voters in specific political districts and races. There are people who see polls showing a candidate leading in a district or race and use that poll to vote for the candidate. Then, there are voters who see polls with their preferred candidate losing and thinking their vote would be wasted, don’t bother voting.
In the upcoming elections voters are urged to vote for candidates based on the policies they postulate; how they perceive a candidate can improve their standard of living and not depend on what polls forecast. There are just too many reasons to doubt the accuracy of polls. A vote is too precious a thing to waste. Don’t be duped by polls. Vote instead with your head, or your gut.
