By Andrew Georgy
With the 2024 election just ending, you’ve probably heard the word “polling” used often. Polls’ frequency in a certain race is usually determined by the race’s magnitude or the candidates’ popularity.
For example, numerous polls are conducted daily on presidential elections, while less populated districts (such as in North Dakota) have much less frequent polling opportunities for their residents due to their insignificance in such races (or due to their history of voting for a preferred party). Therefore, polls don’t represent all U.S. voters as it’s impossible to include all voters and demographics equally.
Additionally, while polling is extremely useful when looking at large margins, multiple upsets usually happen and other aspects dominate elections.
To illustrate, Democrat Marie Gluesenkamp Perez emerged victorious against Republican Joe Kent in the WA-3 district. This was despite the district leaning Republican over the last decade and Kent being predicted to win with a 98% chance. Rather, Glusenkemp won by a fine margin of just 0.5%.
Furthermore, only some polls are nonpartisan, as candidates will often sponsor multiple universities and other polling places to conduct a poll for them. Despite the seeming silliness of such polls, candidates will often sponsor polls to maintain donations and excitement as they make their final push.
“Polls that campaigns release should also be taken with a grain of salt. If a campaign releases a poll that says that they’re down two points, I’d be willing to bet that they’re actually down eight points,” Andrew Schwartz, the vice president of a political analysis research firm, said in a PBS news interview. “But they’re going to say it’s two points to keep people excited and donating and generating attention.”
Polling can also prove inaccurate due to social desirability bias, where respondents will answer to a pollster what they believe is the more acceptable answer than what they believe in. For example, in 2016, many surveyed people were Republican supporters but weren’t vocal about it publicly, leading to inaccurate polls.
Another problem polling sites such as 538 face is that many media polls aren’t accurate enough due to cost-cutting measures.
“But there are not many media polls that are spending a lot of money like we do to do daily interviews the right way, using multimodal methodologies, doing quotas, etc. We get branded by the fact that there are now dozens and dozens of cheap media polls that I think are a problem,” John Anzalone, President Biden’s chief pollster in 2020, through the Harvard Gazette said.
To combat cheap polls, 538 has given each pollster a reliability rating from one to three stars; however, other polling sites don’t have an extensive backroom staff compared to 538, as 538 is supported and owned by ABC News, one of the largest news corporations. Therefore, they are unable to excessively and mundanely analyze and synthesize all polls posted through their system.
Race to the Whitehouse perfectly contrasts an established poll collector and a smaller poll collector. Race to the Whitehouse currently employs one full-time employee, while 538 comprises anywhere between 11 and 50 full-time analysts and authors.
The stark difference in resources allows 538 to be the most popular government website in the US (their traffic received is more than state and federal websites), while Race to the Whitehouse is ranked 242th, or a difference of over 45 million visitors.
So, what’s the main takeaway? The undependability of polls and polling websites shouldn’t influence your vote and should merely be used as an inaccurate prediction. Don’t let social desirability bias affect your political opinions because you fear ostracization.
If you are viewing polls, the main factors to consider are who sponsors them, their past reliability, and the demographics asked. While polls can be useful, they are merely suggestions and averages; in the end, one solid vote weighs more than hundreds of potential votes!
