A lot of people, including many political journalists, don't like polls. Some say there isn't any point in taking a poll three months from election day. "Who cares? Election day is the only poll that matters!," said one of my colleagues recently.
Others just don't trust polls, because many times they don't turn out to be right. Polls are not an exact science, but in my opinion, they are the best weapon we have in determining where a race stands.
I love polls, and I'm not ashamed to say it. I love them because I'm a political junkie, but also because it tells us what people are thinking at a certain point in time. It tells us whether we should be paying more attention to a certain race. Imagine if we covered the Talent-McCaskill race without any poll. How would we know to give it the attention it deserves? Do we just assume it will be close because every statewide Missouri race turns out that way? My rule is that you use polls cautiously and skeptically. Don't put too much weight on any given one. But put them all together and see what type of trend line you get. Of course, they aren't always right. But this year, they were pretty darn good.
About two weeks before the election, many of the polls showed Sen. Talent leading narrowly. Then a week before the election, the polls shifted and gave McCaskill a slight lead. According to the polls, McCaskill was gaining some slight momentum going into the last week. The final Gallup poll taken before election day gave McCaskill a 4% lead going into election day. She won by about 3%. Many polls were giving the Libertarian candidate about 2% of the vote. He ended up getting 2.2%. I checked many of the other national polls in U.S. Senate races across the country, and many turned out to reflect accurate election results.
The reason I point this out is because we hear so often, "Don't believe the polls! They're wrong." Poll bashing is in. Many times it is deserved. Zogby infamously predicted John Kerry would be President. Pollsters shouldn't predict. They should let their data speak for itself. While other times, polls deserve to be bashed, this year, they deserve to be praised.
So a tip of the hat to the pollsters.
The polls were right, and they proved to be a helpful guide, providing helpful snapshots of public opinion along the way.
4 comments:
I stopped by Greene County Dems headquarters many times during the election. According to Sara Lampe a pollster in her office called results within a tenth of a percent during her last bid for office. I'm really interested in meeting this gentelman. Let me know if you find him becuase that's a man worth interviewing.
Polls, if accuarte help us understand what the cause and effect relation of political messaging and public opinion. I put a great link up on my site - when you click it - poll results show in animation day by day. As we reflect on the campaigns we can check our blogging post and derive wisdom....polls can help us interpret history.
bobicus tomatocus said... "For instance, in the debate she said that oil companies were manipulating prices to try and help keep Republicans in office - and you never challenged her on the issue!"
Tell me why, then, did gas price go up from 1.99 to 2.09 after the election.
You both are right to an extent, however the media is under no obligation to be accurate or unbiased. We live in a capitalist society where profit is the main motive no manner how righteous the spoke persons for media claim to be. The consumers of news can punish those whom they don't trust by seeking information elsewhere.
I can understand the need for candidates to use polls and the interest that the media has in them but I wonder how many people are influenced by the repeated reporting of them. I personally would like to know more about candidates finances and business dealings and less about polling trends. Media makes alot of money selling and making ads to candidates and naturally is obsessed with which ones work. When they report that the polls show a trend for one candidate and speculate the reason is a particular ad campaign they automatically receive a sale from the other thus stirring the pot and increasing profits.
Much as I dislike Bush (and would also dislike "President Kerry", just for balances' sake), I don't believe George picks up the phone and tells oil companies when to bump gas prices up or down.
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