The Case Against Pre-Election Polling: Opinion
I don’t advocate doing away with election polling. My argument is against releasing the results before the election.
The job of the news media should not be to predict the outcome of an election, but to inform voters of the issues and the candidates’ positions. Leave the numbers to political scientists to analyze post-election and to come to whatever conclusions they reach.
David Schultz is an expert on election law, as well as constitutional law, eminent domain, and land use law. He has a doctorate in political science and a law degree from the University of Minnesota, where he is a visiting professor.
Schultz says there are serious problems with pre-election polling. He reports that fewer individuals answer their phone, while the disappearance of land lines and “the prevalence of cell phones with area codes not easily tied to identifiable political boundaries means that the cost of doing good polls has gone up because more people have to be called to get statistically meaningful results.”
Another problem with polls, according to Schulz, is that while some are accurate, others are not, with inaccurate polls being reported the same as accurate ones. Polls also can influence a candidate’s behavior, says Schulz, perhaps leading the candidate who is ahead to withdraw from a debate or make other changes in voter strategy.
Paul deLespinasse is an independent writing and editing professional in Corvallis, Ore., and is a professor emeritus at Adrian College in Michigan.
He calls for the end of pre-election polling because the results of the polls are too often inaccurate. As an example, deLespinasse cites the 2016 presidential campaign, when polls up to the final days of the campaign predicted that Hillary Clinton would win the election. In 2020 the polls predicted a Biden landslide, yet the Electoral College results were close.
Making polls more accurate, however, has its own problems, according to deLespinasse, because there is no benefit to predicting an election’s outcome. He says that in addition to their cost, the polls “actually inflict serious damage on our public life.” The time and space in our media devoted to polls would be better spent on “factual reports about candidates and discussion of costs and benefits of possible public policies.”
Publishing poll results prior to the election also runs the risk of influencing the outcome. If the numbers reported strongly favor one side, it may make the result seem inevitable and discourage people from voting. DeLespinasse notes that polls undermine democratic control of government because “candidates are always tempted to tell us what we want to hear, rather than what they actually think.”
In conclusion, there seems to be no good reason to publish poll results before an election, while there are good reasons not to.
As deLespinasse states, “We should also criticize news media that talk about polling results and, when possible, switch our attention to newspapers and broadcasters that refrain from reporting on polls or at least minimize it. We should do everything possible to create conditions in which candidates talk about and the media reports, things that encourage citizens to think seriously about public policy and to vote intelligently.”
A native of Wicomico County, George Shivers holds a doctorate from the University of Maryland and taught in the Foreign Language Dept. of Washington College for 38 years before retiring in 2007. He is also very interested in the history and culture of the Eastern Shore, African American history in particular.
Common Sense for the Eastern Shore
