Adrastos, Campaign Notes, Fog Of History, Political Crack

How I Learned To Stop Worrying & Hate The Polls

The post title is a play on Dr. Strangelove Or How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb. That’s why the featured meme is of Slim Pickens riding a bomb like a bronco. Ride, Slim, ride.

I’ve hated the polls forever. My distrust of them became full-blown in 2004. Anyone else remember the leaked exit poll that showed John Kerry as the victor? I didn’t start blogging until the next year, but I spread the news among my New Orleans friends and neighbors. We gathered to wave signs at the corner of Napoleon and Magazine in high spirits only to have them squashed like a bug when the results rolled in.

I should have known better than to believe the 2004 polls. I lived through 1980 when the pollsters assured us that it would be tight as a tick between Reagan and Carter. Instead, we had the Reagan landslide. Some great senators lost that year including Birch Bayh, Gaylord Nelson, Frank Church, and George McGovern. They were all replaced by dingbat wingnuts and the IQ of the senate went down accordingly.

Then there was 2016 when the pollsters expected a blowout but instead the Insult Comedian eked out a win in the fakakta electoral college.

This year, the polls are all over the place. Many showing distinct pro-GOP modeling biases including the NYT/Siena poll, which is the poll that causes bedwetters to change their underwear every time it comes out. As usual, Josh Marshall nails it:

With this abysmal track record why do so many people still mainline the polls? That’s the question Rick Perlstein poses in The Polling Imperilment. Perlstein is a liberal historian who chronicled the rise of the modern American right in books such as Nixonland, The Invisible Bridge, and Reaganland.

If you’ve ever engaged with pollsters on social media, you’ve experienced their arrogance. It doesn’t matter if they’ve been wrong in the past, they’re right this time. They should learn about the cycles of polling history detailed by Perlstein and try some humility after their next failure.

Perlstein centers his discussion on a 2020 book by W. Joseph Campbell, Lost In A Gallup: Polling Failures In US Presidential Elections:

Reading Campbell’s book, I found myself creating a section of my notes headed “Assholes.” Like George Gallup in ’48 giving the excuse that his mistakes were his audience’s fault: “Most laymen see no difference between forecasting an election and picking the winner of a horse race. In due time these people will be educated to the difference.” Or John Zogby in 2004, when he had joined the herd who said John Kerry had it in the bag. This was so taken for granted that on Election Day, senior adviser Bob Shrum said to Kerry, “May I be the first to call you Mr. President?” When this proved wrong, Zogby whined, “I don’t know that anyone was hospitalized over my prediction.”

Posing as scientists, pollsters don’t like to admit that there’s a lot of guesswork in what they do:

Past performance is no guarantee of future results; but past performance is all a pollster has to go on. That’s why much of the process of choosing and weighting samples is … well, you can call it “more art than science.” Or you can call it “intuitive.” Or you can call it “trial and error.” But you can also call it “made up.”

I mentioned 1980 earlier, here’s Perlstein’s take on that polling mishigas:

They try by sifting voters into categories: male or female, young or old, religious or not. That latter one makes for a possible explanation for the debacle of 1980: Evangelical Christians went from being one of the least active categories of voters to pretty active in 1976, when Jimmy Carter ran, someone they considered one of their own. But how many of them would vote in 1980, after their leaders threw Carter over for his alleged liberal heresies? With such a small “n” (in social science terms) to work with, it was no more scientific than throwing at a dartboard with a blindfold.”

Modeling polls is a crapshoot, but pollsters never admit it. That’s why I read the polls but never take them literally. Unlike the Nate Silvers of the world, I try to learn from my past mistakes, not repeat them. I don’t sweat crosstabs and never try to unskew the polls like the Romney backers in 2012 who couldn’t believe their guy lost.

I am content in my poll hatred. I look at them and they’re a factor in my thinking during an election year, but never central to it. That’s why I groan every time the legacy media leads with their latest poll. They’re just snapshots in time that depend on the modeling done by the pollsters. Don’t be a mug and take them literally just because they involve statistics. Remember what Disraeli said about that:

Yeah, you right Dizzy. Polls are junk food for political junkies. It’s one area in which I’ve kicked the habit. Try it, you’ll like it. It beats the hell outta riding a nuke.

I’ve talked about hate in this post. Let’s bring some love. The musical last word goes to the Ohio Players:

The countdown last word goes to Cary Grant, Eva Marie Saint and them dead presidents in North By Northwest: