November 3, 2020 is a historic date. Not because of the presidential election, but because it should mark the death of the media’s reliance on public polling.
Regardless of whether Joe Biden or Donald Trump ultimately prevails, the media needs to once again evaluate their behavior leading up to Election Day. For the past several election cycles, the American public has been fed a steady stream of polls, conducted with outdated methodology, to give us a definitive view of who is winning. They were wrong in 2016, they were wrong again in 2018 and they are wrong again in 2020. It has gotten to the point that if a state poll is within the margin of error, it’s more happenstance than any true foresight.
Public polls are like drugs to political reporters and to talking heads, but, most of the time, they do not even understand how to use the data they are shamelessly using to shape their narratives.
While there is a definite science to polling, it is still far more of an art. The outputs are completely dependent upon the inputs, which are a judgement call by the firm conducting the survey. And then, for a basic primer in how it all works, the polling firm has to model the data to determine the percentages of people who will vote. In years past, they could look to prior similar elections to create accurate models. The prevalence of cell phones began to impact accuracy, and then Donald Trump happened…
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