What Should Voters Always Look for When Reading a Poll to Be Sure It Is Accurate?
Polling Bug and Why We Should Withal Trust (Some) Polls
SUMMARY
UNIFYING THEME:Information Marketplace: Ensuring the Public has the Data
Elections indicate who wins, merely not why. Public opinion polling, done right, remains the best way of obtaining citizens' opinions. While some advise two consecutive polling "fails" in presidential elections destroy trust in the process, policy makers in a representative democracy should pause before branding all polling data with the same mark.
RELATED NEWS: Josh Clinton on polls and trust in polling every bit seen in:
- The New York Times, "Introducing Our New Polling Blog," (March 3, 2021)
- The Washington Postal service, "2020 presidential polls suffered worse performance in decades, study says," (July nineteen, 2021)
- Pol, "Pollsters: Incommunicable to say why 2020 polls were incorrect," (July nineteen, 2021)
by Joshua Clinton,Abby and Jon Winkelried Chair and Professor of Political Science
Another election, another apparent miss by too many of the pre-election polls that collection election coverage throughout the 2020 cycle. Official mail-mortems are actively underway, simply pre-ballot polls conspicuously understated support for Republicans across the state. So, what does this mean for polling?
Some have suggested that two consecutive "fails" in presidential elections means that no poll can exist trusted. This determination is too hasty and besides broad. It fails to appreciate the essential role public opinion polls tin can and should play in maintaining the legitimacy of our representative regime and informing policy makers.
Putting aside 2020 for a minute, why should nosotros carp with polling?
Representative government relies on elected officials acting in the interests of the citizens they represent. But how can those officials know what the people might desire from their regime? Elections indicate who wins, but not why. Politicians are oft eager to claim that their victory represents a mandate, but the only thing an ballot actually reveals is that a bulk of voters preferred one candidate over another – a determination that can be driven as much attraction every bit repulsion, and as much by partisanship and identity as by policy.
But how tin nosotros know what voters think? Politicians in earlier periods relied on newspaper editorial pages to appraise community priorities, just few would suggest that this work present given the dramatic decline in local newspapers and the increasing politicization of some news sources. Protests tin can reveal public discontent, but it is hard to know how broadly the views of those passionate plenty to accept to the streets -- or write letters or attend meetings -- resonate in the club at big. Social media platforms take increased the ease of expressing political opinions, only information technology is hard to discern what the public thinks from posts made by politically active citizens, trolls, and 'bots.
At the stop of the twenty-four hours, public opinion polling, done right, remains the best fashion of obtaining citizens' opinions. By proactively attempting to requite everyone an equal chance of being heard, public opinion polls provide a manner of obtaining the views of citizens who are uninterested or unable to express their political views otherwise.
To be clear, public opinion is important, but it cannot and should non wholly determine public policy or legislative activeness. Political leadership can, and should, assistance inform and shape public opinion – particularly in a representative commonwealth where our elected officials oftentimes take more time, expertise, and awareness of the circuitous situations facing the nation than ordinary citizens. Moreover, public stance may be incoherent, based on a misunderstanding of reality, and/or be simply weakly held. Despite these important caveats, knowing the public'due south opinion matters because it reveals what the public thinks it wants from its government and this sensation can help highlighting when and where political leadership is required.
But almost that 2020 pre-election polling…
After the 2016 election, information technology was clear that there were problems with pre-election polls. Putting aside whether pre-election polls should be used to make such projections, the 2016 election consequence caused great soul-searching among pollsters and several reasons for the relatively poor performance of state-level polls were identified: tardily-deciding voters in the critical swing states unexpectedly choose President Trump by big margins, many state-level polls failed to account for the human relationship between education and vote pick, and the polls in several close states failed to correctly predict the electorate's size and composition.
Heading into the 2020 election, pre-election pollsters had reasons for optimism. Not simply did the 2018 pre-ballot polls correctly predict that the Democrats would recapture the Business firm of Representatives, but pre-ballot polling practices had besides changed and many polls at present accounted for the importance of pedagogy. In addition, unlike the uncertain and unsettled electorate of 2016, voters in 2020 were largely decided heading into Election Day.
Similar 2016, pre-election polls continued to drive campaign news coverage thoughout the 2020 bike. At to the lowest degree 1,572 state-level presidential polls were conducted and publicly released – including 438 in the last two weeks lonely – and these polls resulted in many hours of coverage devoted to speculation virtually what the results meant, why the candidates were performing as they were, and what could change earlier Election Day. Given how well Democrats were performing in pre-ballot polls existence done in the "red" states of Iowa, Ohio, and Texas, many expected that 2020 might exist a "blue moving ridge" election.
As we now know, this did not happen. Moreover, the 2020 pre-ballot polls managed to do worse than the 2016 pre-election polls at the land level and country-level pre-election polls understated the support for Republican candidates by v% on average. Despite nearly 500 polls being done in the last two weeks and a dramatic increase in the sophistication of pre-election surveys, the understatement of Republican back up was the largest polling mistake in recent memory.
So, does 2020 show that polls are too broken to trust?
Confronted with the sense that the polls "failed" in 2016 and 2020 – and that the polls in 2020 failed to accurate measure the support for Republicans --– does this mean that public stance is unknowable from public opinion polls? Or, possibly even worse, that the polls are inherently skewed against Republicans?
The poor functioning of pre-ballot polls in 2020 was consequential and unfortunate, only it does not necessarily impugn the accuracy of all public opinion polling. Pre-ballot polling is different from, and more difficult than, public opinion polling that seeks to gauge the opinions of citizens in a country (our country). In fact, some prominent polling organizations, such as Gallup, has put aside pre-election polling to focus exclusively on public opinion polling.
Pre-election polls must effigy out two things. Kickoff, who is going to vote, and 2d, who those voters will vote for. A mistake in either volition create polling errors and both are unknowable . In 2016, for example, not but was the higher turnout in Republican (rural) areas relative to Democratic (urban) areas unexpected by pre-election pollsters, but and then besides was the extent to which late-deciding voters would support President Trump. While a pre-election poll with also few Republicans is obviously unlikely to correctly predict the outcome of an election, an unavoidable event with pre-election polling is that we tin never exist sure of how many Republicans is too few (or besides many) until well after the actual election. Pre-election polls must inevitably make very consequential decisions most what they think the electorate is going to be without whatsoever way of knowing whether those decisions are right.
These decisions matter because the people who answer surveys nowadays are oft non a random sample of the electorate. Because the boilerplate respondent is older, more than educated, whiter, and more female person than the boilerplate voter, pollsters must make statistical adjustments to ensure that the puddle of respondents improve resemble the population of interest. For pre-ballot polls, this means making an educated guess about who is going to vote and what that implies about the composition of the electorate – a guess that tin can ever exist wrong.
Polls that seek to mensurate the public opinion of an entire country, in dissimilarity, face up a much easier chore because we know what a land should wait like. When conducting our Vanderbilt Poll, for example, nosotros know exactly how our respondents compare to the state – unlike pre-election polls, we don't need to guess what we think the land looks like. Whereas pre-ballot pollsters tin brand mistakes because the electorate turns out to exist unlike than what they thought, we know what the country of Tennessee looks like and this lessens the opportunity for fault. In that location are certainly a lot of ways for polls to get it incorrect – more on that in future posts – but because we know what a country looks like we tin be far more confident when ensuring that our sample of poll respondents reflects the overall population when doing polls that are non trying to predict an election.
All Polls are Non Created Equal
The outcomes of the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections have caused some to dismiss all polling as hopeless and helpless. The polling errors of the final ii cycles were nowhere near as big as those that occurred in 1936 and 1948, but they have caused many to discount the importance and value of public opinion polling. It is certainly unfortunate that the coverage of polls often does not fairly convey the many decisions that pollsters must make when analyzing a poll – as well as the potential consequences of those decisions – only it is too easy to dismiss all polls based only the contempo operation of pre-election polls.
It would also be a mistake. Pre-election polls must make educated guesses near what the electorate will exist and mistakes in those guesses tin can produce inaccurate poll results. Polls that seek to describe the opinions of a state (or country), in contrast, benefit from the fact that we know what the composition of the state should be and pollsters are better able to ensure that their poll respondents are representative of that population.
Public stance polls go along to play an of import role in a representative democracy by highlighting the opinions, priorities, and beliefs of its' citizens. Just people are correct to view pre-election polling with a critical eye. Horse race numbers should not be taken as gospel by pundits or politicians. However, policy makers in a representative democracy should intermission before branding all polling information with the same mark lest nosotros lose i of the few ways that we take of assessing what the public thinks. Paraphrasing Churchill, public opinion polls may very well be the worst way to assess what the public thinks, bated from all the alternatives.
Source: https://www.vanderbilt.edu/unity/2021/01/11/polling-problems-and-why-we-should-still-trust-some-polls/
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