Polling Results are as Trustworthy as a Prediction by Zoltar

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Three reasons why mainstream media should stop reporting on them

Americans are obsessed with foretelling the future of everything from the weather to horseracing to political campaigns. But the stark reality is that predicting election results has become about as accurate as a visit to a carnival fortune teller.

What makes matters worse is that the mainstream media is obsessed with reporting poll results and bombarding readers and watchers with almost daily gazes into crystal balls predicting how the midterm elections will turn out.

There’s a whole industry of hucksters making a fortune out of prophesying the future of elections. While they no longer rely on tea leaves, ouija boards, or casting sticks to determine the outcome of political contests, they’ve managed to develop a new divination tool called polling.

It’s a dangerous game, especially in the age of social media. Reporting poll results has become increasingly threatening in its insidious influence over how we cast our votes. The unintended consequence is an inordinately negative influence by media outlets conservative and liberal alike. Polling has become the new ruler in the bizarre world of campaign land.

Rather than educating the electorate, polling leaves us blind to the truth and leaves us unable to see that the emperor has no clothes.

An example of the negative influence of polling can be demonstrated by a mayoral contest a few years ago in a rust belt city in upstate New York. A poll run just days before the election showed an incumbent mayoral candidate winning with 70% of the vote which was widely reported throughout the community. The foregone conclusion resulted in such a poor turnout of voters that the incumbent lost. The winner of this fiasco was a disaster for the community causing eight years of corruption and incompetence leading to at least one suicide, multiple elected officials resigning from office including the mayor being forced out of city hall under a cloud of fraud and criminal activity.

Recently two polls about the race for governor in New York from “experts” displayed dramatically different results. One had the current governor trouncing her opponent, the other had her leading by a mere 4 percent. They can’t both be right. Factor in the margin of error, and the election is a toss-up at best

What also makes polling even scarier is the proliferation of polling sources. So many polling peddlers are practicing the trade that no matter what the outcome of the competition, someone will turn out to be right and consequently be crowned as the newest sage to be worshipped until the next round of elections.

All of this means that trusting the latest poll is as sure a way to determine election outcome as consulting a costumed fortune teller at a traveling carnival tent.

Here are just a few reasons why we can’t trust polling results:

Nobody answers their phone anymore. A polling firm’s number one tool for reaching participants is the telephone. The reality is that no one with half a brain answers unknown numbers on their mobile for fear of it being one more pitch to buy a new warranty on their car.

Pollsters rely on the truth being told by respondents as to whether they are likely to vote in the upcoming contest. To determine this, they rely on public historical data from boards of election indicating voter turnout on an individual basis. This process ignores the influence on elections of new voters, and important local issues that are affecting voters’ attitudes. And it’s a proven fact that when a stranger asks, “Are you planning to vote in the coming election”, most people are too embarrassed to answer “no” for fear they will be considered a bad citizen.

The margin of error in polling results has crept up over the years to four or even five percent. That’s a sure sign that the results are probably false. In the campaign business, it used to be that if you got polling results that exceeded a margin of error of plus or minus 2 ½ or even 3 percent you held the results in suspicion. Now with results being accepted at twice those numbers, it means the outcome could be dramatically different than the poll's conclusion.

Recently, the venerated New York Times had no less than three stories on poll results on page one. A basic tenant of a good democracy is an educated citizenry. Consumers of news should understand the unreliability of polling, and the media should stop reporting poll results as front-page facts.

The naked truth is that polling has become a roll of the dice at best. Somebody needs to point out that the emperor has no clothes and that media outlets should focus on using precious news space to compare and contrast the candidates and relevant issues rather than trying to foretell the future.