Chairman
In the build-up to the nationwide elections on November 3, we’ve seen a crescendo of news coverage and social media posts in recent months featuring public opinion polls: Who’s likely to win. What issues are most important to voters. Who is blamed for what problems and who is more credible to fix them.
Polling and talking about polls are rituals in American politics and journalism.
And as public opinion has become more sharply divided and public rhetoric grown harsher on a wide realm of aspects of public life — social beliefs and practices, cultural attitudes, religion, education, and virtually every institution in society — the debate about the measurement of that selfsame public opinion has become more aggressive.
So, what can we believe? And does it even really matter?
The use of public opinion
We live in a society of mass communications, consumerism, and broad political and social engagement. Organizations of every type want to know how people feel about them, their messages, performance, products, reputation and people. Those who have urgency, money or the need for sophisticated analysis will use any number of tools to learn insight about public sentiments. Public opinion polling is one of those tools, but there are others too: consumer surveys, market research, open-source intel collection, social media monitoring and more.
At Goff Public, we’ve worked with some of the most experienced, reputable public opinion research firms in the nation. We find that polling can be an essential research tool to inform effective strategies and tactical decisions: What arguments are persuasive; to whom should one direct most of one’s resources (time, money); who is most credible in carrying a given message; are communications efforts working or not?
Not every organization needs public opinion polling. But in some instances, it can be invaluable.
Private, confidential polling serves an internal research function, whether for a nonprofit organization, labor union, political campaign, corporation, church or another group. This is to be distinguished from…
Public polling and its purposes
Public opinion research which is conducted to be released to the public serves a much different function. It’s typically conducted under the auspices of a media organization, academic institution or non-partisan research organization.
Ostensibly, this is a civic-minded effort to educate us — the public — about what we collectively think. To some extent, this provides a valid public service. It also offers a useful measurement against past or future poll findings, which allows us to see what direction public opinion is moving for good or ill.
But there’s also a discernable self-interest at work too in public polling: To “sell more newspapers” in the past and garner “more eyeballs” in today’s digital age. Controversy sells and creates buzz. And what better way to create buzz among the information-consuming public than to present a snapshot of current public opinion, in all it’s often ill-informed glory!
Lazy political reportage has always favored the “horse-race” aspect of governing and electioneering over substantive, in-depth reporting. Who’s on top in popular appeal? Who has more money? Whose views or policy positions are supported by a majority?
Ripe for rebuttal and rejection
Part of the political game around public polling is the effort made to delegitimize the results by those who don’t like the results — a losing political candidate, an unpopular government leader, a reputationally damaged organization or a marginalized group. This typically takes the form of:
- Accusation of bias by the poll’s sponsor, wanting to:
- Manufacture a new public opinion that didn’t previously exist or just to sensationalize.
- Create a sense of inevitability about something that isn’t necessarily so.
- Build conformity around a point of view.
- Accusation of flawed survey methodology.
Every so often, the accusation of bias or methodological error might even be true. And whether true or not, it’s necessary self-defense: A candidate cannot afford to have voters, volunteers and donors think all is lost. “The poll is wrong, the media are against us and we’re going to prove them all wrong on Election Day” is the vital signal of defiance in the face of bad polling news. In my own past political experience, I resorted to this: I was the campaign manager for a statewide candidate who trailed his major opponent by 20% two months before the election; he ended up beating him by 6%.
Accuracy and qualification
Yes, there have been a few blown polling calls of major proportions: President Truman’s come-from-behind victory over Thomas E. Dewey in 1948, against all predictions. President Trump’s surprise-to-the-professional-pollsters defeat of Hilary Clinton in 2016. These are the iconic examples which trailing candidates and their followers will cite to give hope in grim circumstances.
But there are always factors which explain the difference between pre-election poll findings and hard election results:
- Voter turnout or its absence among certain groups (high excitement vs. low-morale partisans).
- Late-breaking developments (e.g., a candidate’s gaffe or an “October surprise”).
- Voters who are embarrassed to admit to a pollster that they plan to vote for a candidate who is outside of polite society (famously, Jesse Ventura in 1998, President Trump in 2016 primaries and general election).
- In the case of individual polls, there typically is a statistical qualification that even a highly representative sample of poll respondents will only yield a 95% confidence level of results within the margin of error.
But, despite these instances and some others, it’s important to acknowledge that most public polling is quite accurate.
It is true that pollsters have had to adapt their methodologies as public behavior and technology use have changed. The death of land-line phones, people’s greater skepticism of receiving a call or text from a stranger, and other factors have increased the technical difficulties, including lower phone response rates and weighting results to get closer to a representative, and compensating with online survey tools. But these recent challenges have not invalidated the worth or accuracy of the public opinion research profession.
Final thoughts
In the era of “fake news” claims, hyper-partisanship and some high-profile missed calls, should we believe in the accuracy of public polls? Generally, yes with the margin of error.
Do they really mean anything? That’s a more arguable and subjective question to answer. To some extent, public polls are part of the news-as-entertainment phenomenon and little more. Most voters are not going to change their vote to the other candidate or the other side on a ballot question because of others’ views as represented in a public poll. If anything, they will find comfort that they are in the majority or the “righteous” minority. Lopsided public polling results may be a symptom rather than the cause of weak voter turnout.
But one thing is certain: After reading the results of a public opinion survey, you will be fascinated — and, perhaps, infuriated — that so many of your fellow citizens could think like that!