Why Polls Are Meaningless
2008 Republican Primary Polls
- The link to the left is to the Real Clear Politics Polling Data page
for the 2008 Republican Primary. At this point in the election
campaign, October 26, former New York Mayor Rudy Guilani was leading
and Tennessee Senator and actor Fred Thompson was second. Arkansas
Governor Mike Huckabee was way down, with less than 6% "support." But
when all of the primary votes were in, neither Guilani or Thompson were
at the top; in fact, they were both long gone. Senator John McCain won
the nomination and Mike Huckabee was second, while former Massachusetts
Governor Mitt Romney was third (Romney ended up with 22% of the actual
votes cast.) On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton was leading the
pack and now-President Barack Obama was way down. Everything changed
once the votes started being cast, and the entire election picture was
far different than what the polls were indicating a year before the
actual elections.
Why is early polling so meaningless? There are a number of reasons.
First, polls "sample" only a minute portion of the actual population.
For example, there are 435 Congressional districts in the United
States, each of which has one vote in the Electoral College. The only
way to get a true representation of what people are thinking would be
to survey a substantial number of likely voters in each district, a
minimum of at least 10, or even better, 100 people. Pollsters, however,
don't do that. They sample a number of voters nationally, usually a few
hundred to a couple of thousand, without consideration of the
demographics of where that person lives. They ask a battery of
questions, and then determine results based on the answers. They
"identify" preferences based on what the person being surveyed has
indicated to questions such as "Are you a Republican or a Democrat"
that are mixed into a battery of questions. They use "scientific" means
of evaluating the data which is basically applying formulas that have
been worked out by polling companies.
Just who are these pollsters, anyway? In some cases the polls are
conducted by academic groups, but most are conducted by commercial
polling companies whose main purpose is to make money. They publish
their polls for a fee paid by the news media or political
organizations. Many polling companies also do market research for
corporations. They thus have a financial interest in maintaining an
interest in their results. Some polling companies are affiliated with a
particular political party. Each poll is only as reliable as the
information obtained by those who make the calls, assuming they are
using telephone polling.
So, just how important are polls? About as important as political
debates. The only place where debates take place is in the Congress,
not in the Executive Branch. After all, Moses spoke through his brother
Aaron.
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Updated October 27, 2011