Vice President Kamala Harris may lead in the national polling average and be slightly ahead in four of the seven battleground states, depending on where you look, but behind the window-dressing lurks so much more. First, a recent Gallup poll revealed that when it comes to the issues Americans are most concerned about, like the economy, immigration, and crime, more people trust the GOP than the Democrats to manage them.
Now, consider this: Pew Research Center has discovered that polls have been less accurate when former President Donald Trump is on the ballot when compared to other polls in the past 20 years. If this is true, what does that say about Harris’ numbers? Could the combination of the vice president’s media-embellished hype and Trump’s impact on the polls be fabricating a flawed view?
Some Problems With Polls
One well-known issue with polls is “forced choice.” Let’s say participants have only three options. If their opinion is not listed, they choose the statement closest to how they feel. Not only do polls “limit people’s sense of wider possibilities,” but “those who pay the pollsters commonly influence the scope of ideas and attitudes deemed worthy of consideration,” claims national media watch group FAIR.
“A good pollster is like a good attorney, and fights for the result that the commissioning party expects or needs,” quipped Christopher Hitchens in 1992, writing for Harper’s. “[I]n the parlance, such a poll is called ‘client-directed.’ Pollsters themselves make no bones about their influence on the outcome.”
Then there’s “herding,” when polling firms deliberately “produce results that closely match one another, especially toward the end of a campaign,” explained Nate Silver in an article published after his colleague had discovered evidence of “herding” in the 2014 midterms. Pollsters “herd” by not allowing their results to “deviate by more than 3 percentage points from the average of previous polls.” If they unknowingly miss an error in one poll, “herding” replicates it. This isn’t typical behavior among pollsters. Still, there’s a name for it, so it has happened often enough.
Why would they do this? Some pollsters fear having flawed results and often believe outliers mean something went wrong during the process. Others supposedly do it to affect outcomes, thumbing the scales to manipulate readers’ perceptions because many voters choose the candidate leading in the polls. It’s what independent news outlet The Conversation calls the “bandwagon effect,” an issue that has led some countries, such as France and South Korea, to restrict publishing opinion polls, worried the results will influence voters’ decisions.
You see, polls aren’t designed primarily to predict a winner. They’re also a tool for politicians to guide their next moves and reshape Americans’ perceptions of them. “Opinion polling was born out of a struggle,” wrote Hitchens, “not to discover the public mind but to master it.”
Okay, but what does all this say about the poll claiming Americans trust the GOP more than the Democrats to tackle the big issues? It seems contradictory to boast about one poll and then discount the rest, doesn’t it? Perhaps. But, as Liberty Nation News highlighted, according to Gallup’s records, “in every election since 1952, the party viewed more favorably on the most important issue(s) has won the presidency.”
And let’s not forget: “Compared with other elections in the past 20 years,” Pew has learned, “polls have been less accurate when Donald Trump is on the ballot.” The former president’s supporters seem reluctant to participate in surveys and “tend to sit out midterms,” making it difficult for pollsters to predict who will vote. Despite whose names are on the ballot,“[t]he real margin of error is often about double the one reported.” In fact, based on today’s polling numbers, if the margin of error ends up being the same as in 2020 or 2016, according to an established Washington newspaper, Trump would win six of the seven swing states in both scenarios.
No matter how anybody looks at it, there’s no way to know how the election will unfold. Between sampling faults and human errors, too many variables exist within the polling process to gauge how much trust to place in the results. Does Harris really have a national lead of around three points? Maybe. But Gallup’s recent revelation shows history might know more about this election than the glossy headlines.
