Polls–Divination or Manipulation?
As I write this, it is the evening of October 2, 2012 and the first Presidential debate is yet to occur. Nonetheless, with only 35 days until the election, we seem to be inundated with polls of every kind. Because I live in Florida, I have been getting phone calls soliciting my input for polls every single day for the last month or two. I realize that readers not in swing states may think I’m kidding, but I’m not. Once or twice a week I will actually respond, the rest of the time, I hang up in frustration.
I respect the need of the political campaigns to conduct polls to measure the effectiveness of their efforts. What I don’t respect is the apparent need of every news agency on earth to conduct endless polls in order to generate headlines for what is nothing more than a horse race. Worse yet, in today’s particularly egregious Washington Post-ABC News poll, it turns out that, in addition to the usual skewed “weighting” of the poll towards Democrats, the entire poll sample was a mere 161 interviews!
Note to readers: something like 100,000,000 voters may vote in this election, but we are supposed to learn from this crap poll that Romney is behind in the “swing” states that will supposedly decide the election. The 161 poll respondents equal 0.00016 percent of the electorate. Even “better” polls only use between 400 and 500 interviews, resulting in, at best, 0.0005 percent as a sample of the voting population. A handful of really large polls contact 1,000 likely voters and are, consequently, of a statistically significant size—all of one one thousandth of a percent!
I have tried, Lord knows, to think well of the failed English majors who comprise the bulk of our press corps. However, this is simply too much. Even English majors should be able to see that this poll is a statistical travesty and, more to the point, is not an effort to find the truth. No, this is a cynical effort to distort the actual determinations of the electorate and send the message that Romney’s losing so give up and stay home on Election Day
I respect the need of the political campaigns to conduct polls to measure the effectiveness of their efforts. What I don’t respect is the apparent need of every news agency on earth to conduct endless polls in order to generate headlines for what is nothing more than a horse race. Worse yet, in today’s particularly egregious Washington Post-ABC News poll, it turns out that, in addition to the usual skewed “weighting” of the poll towards Democrats, the entire poll sample was a mere 161 interviews!
Note to readers: something like 100,000,000 voters may vote in this election, but we are supposed to learn from this crap poll that Romney is behind in the “swing” states that will supposedly decide the election. The 161 poll respondents equal 0.00016 percent of the electorate. Even “better” polls only use between 400 and 500 interviews, resulting in, at best, 0.0005 percent as a sample of the voting population. A handful of really large polls contact 1,000 likely voters and are, consequently, of a statistically significant size—all of one one thousandth of a percent!
I have tried, Lord knows, to think well of the failed English majors who comprise the bulk of our press corps. However, this is simply too much. Even English majors should be able to see that this poll is a statistical travesty and, more to the point, is not an effort to find the truth. No, this is a cynical effort to distort the actual determinations of the electorate and send the message that Romney’s losing so give up and stay home on Election Day
Mind you, if the political campaigns were doing this, I would just mutter something about whores in politics and move on. However, when the press is actively skewering the truth with such blatant efforts to affect the results of the election, we are in a new world where the old conservative assumptions of press bias now seem much too innocent. Yes kids, your Mom was right when she said, “Just because it’s in the paper doesn’t mean that it’s true.” She can now say, “Just because it’s in the paper means that it probably isn’t true—at least in regards to political reporting.”
My brother, John, has suggested that the raw polling data should be made available to the public at the time these polls are reported. That way, concerned members of the public could easily use the polling data to evaluate the validity of the reported conclusions. Imagine a world where the polling firms had to stand up to that kind of technical and mathematical scrutiny! What a difference we might have in the reporting of polling results!
Returning to the particularly disgusting poll conducted by the Washington Post-ABC News, it is my understanding that the poll indicated that Romney is losing by 11 points in the battleground states, Obama 52 percent and Romney 41 percent. (Note that these results would appear to indicate that seven percent of the respondents must have indicated “other” or “undecided” for the polling results to add up to 100 percent.)
If we take just a moment and think about it, 11 percent of 161 is only 18 voters. If eight voters swung from Democrat to Republican, the poll results would have reported the race to be even between the two candidates in the swing states and, if ten of the poll’s respondents had indicated a preference for Romney, he’d be reported as being in the lead. So, this poll depended on a mere ten respondents to come to its breathless conclusion! Given that the Washington Post-ABC News polls have rather consistently polled a number of Democrats larger than their percentage of the actual voting population, there is every likelihood that a more balanced poll would have found no particular difference between the candidates in the swing states or elsewhere. This election remains, for the moment, a dead heat.
www.unskewedpolls.com has made the effort to rebalance various prominent polls recently reported for the presidential race. When polls reporting President Obama in the lead are rebalanced to edit out the Democratic oversampling bias, suddenly we find that Romney is leading in most polls! This is fairly obvious stuff, but you won’t find it reported anywhere within the mainstream media.
Regardless of your personal candidate preference, we all should demand that the news media provide balanced reporting, including balanced polling. At the very least, were their raw data available, their findings could be independently verified and, perhaps belatedly for the purposes of muting their headlines, provide a more accurate assessment of what each poll actually means.
Of course, the only poll that really matters will be conducted on November 6, 2012. On this day, and in many states, well before, you can make your vote count. So get to it!
Thomas A. Hall
My brother, John, has suggested that the raw polling data should be made available to the public at the time these polls are reported. That way, concerned members of the public could easily use the polling data to evaluate the validity of the reported conclusions. Imagine a world where the polling firms had to stand up to that kind of technical and mathematical scrutiny! What a difference we might have in the reporting of polling results!
Returning to the particularly disgusting poll conducted by the Washington Post-ABC News, it is my understanding that the poll indicated that Romney is losing by 11 points in the battleground states, Obama 52 percent and Romney 41 percent. (Note that these results would appear to indicate that seven percent of the respondents must have indicated “other” or “undecided” for the polling results to add up to 100 percent.)
If we take just a moment and think about it, 11 percent of 161 is only 18 voters. If eight voters swung from Democrat to Republican, the poll results would have reported the race to be even between the two candidates in the swing states and, if ten of the poll’s respondents had indicated a preference for Romney, he’d be reported as being in the lead. So, this poll depended on a mere ten respondents to come to its breathless conclusion! Given that the Washington Post-ABC News polls have rather consistently polled a number of Democrats larger than their percentage of the actual voting population, there is every likelihood that a more balanced poll would have found no particular difference between the candidates in the swing states or elsewhere. This election remains, for the moment, a dead heat.
www.unskewedpolls.com has made the effort to rebalance various prominent polls recently reported for the presidential race. When polls reporting President Obama in the lead are rebalanced to edit out the Democratic oversampling bias, suddenly we find that Romney is leading in most polls! This is fairly obvious stuff, but you won’t find it reported anywhere within the mainstream media.
Regardless of your personal candidate preference, we all should demand that the news media provide balanced reporting, including balanced polling. At the very least, were their raw data available, their findings could be independently verified and, perhaps belatedly for the purposes of muting their headlines, provide a more accurate assessment of what each poll actually means.
Of course, the only poll that really matters will be conducted on November 6, 2012. On this day, and in many states, well before, you can make your vote count. So get to it!
Thomas A. Hall
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