{"id":122828,"date":"2024-02-03T15:32:00","date_gmt":"2024-02-03T19:32:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/?p=122828"},"modified":"2024-02-08T15:33:27","modified_gmt":"2024-02-08T19:33:27","slug":"political-predictions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/political-predictions\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Political Predictions Shouldn&#8217;t Be Made From Polls"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>How useful are political polls if you\u2019re trying to make election predictions? What else can be learned from them?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Political polls collect information on how Americans are thinking about political issues and candidates. However, they should be taken with a grain of salt, as results aren&#8217;t always accurate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Here&#8217;s a look at the usefulness of polls when making political predictions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<!--more-->\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-what-do-you-need-to-know-about-polls-in-2024\"><strong>What Do You Need to Know About Polls in 2024?\u00a0<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>It\u2019s an election year, and headlines about what \u201cpolls show\u201d Americans are thinking have begun to proliferate. Polls can be useful: In 2022, there were more than <a href=\"https:\/\/www.statista.com\/statistics\/273743\/number-of-registered-voters-in-the-united-states\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">161 million registered voters<\/a> in the US. Polling organizations try to learn about voters\u2019 opinions without interviewing millions of people. Experts say that by asking just <a href=\"https:\/\/scienceexchange.caltech.edu\/topics\/voting-elections\/political-polls-science\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">1,000 or 1,500 people<\/a> what they think about a policy or a candidate, a poll can accurately estimate the opinion of the entire nation, but shouldn&#8217;t be used to make political predictions because <strong>it\u2019s easy to misinterpret what a poll result means or to misunderstand what polls really do<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-can-a-poll-capture-what-the-entire-country-thinks\"><strong>Can a Poll Capture What the Entire Country Thinks?<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>Polling organizations can survey only a small subset of the people who are likely to vote in a given election. So a poll\u2019s accuracy in gauging voters\u2019 views comes down to the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2016\/10\/13\/upshot\/the-savvy-persons-guide-to-reading-the-latest-polls.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">size<\/a> and, more importantly, the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.vox.com\/2020\/11\/1\/21544644\/shy-trump-voters-polling-error-explained\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">quality of the poll\u2019s \u201csample.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>If the people in the sample are randomly selected and representative of the population, then even a relatively small sample enables polling organizations to accurately estimate how the larger group feels about a political issue or candidate.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But it\u2019s difficult to put together a sample that checks all of those boxes, and there are <strong>several reasons why polls may get it wrong<\/strong>:&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-1-respondents-aren-t-quite-like-everybody-else\">1. <strong>Respondents Aren\u2019t Quite Like Everybody Else<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p>Polling organizations have traditionally put together their samples by calling thousands of random phone numbers. But that method doesn\u2019t work well anymore. Few people pick up the phone to answer the survey. The people who do answer the phone <a href=\"https:\/\/www.vox.com\/policy-and-politics\/2020\/11\/10\/21551766\/election-polls-results-wrong-david-shor\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">differ from<\/a> the rest of the population, most notably in their level of <a href=\"https:\/\/fivethirtyeight.com\/features\/why-did-republicans-outperform-the-polls-again-two-theories\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">social trust<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Polling organizations compensate by \u201cweighting\u201d responses to account for the demographic differences between their respondents and the overall population. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-2-it-s-hard-to-include-everyone-and-to-measure-people-s-opinions-accurately\"><strong>2. It\u2019s Hard to Include Everyone and to Measure People\u2019s Opinions Accurately<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p>To get around the fact that few people pick up their phones to answer a survey, some polling organizations have moved away from phone-based surveys altogether. Instead, some <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wsj.com\/articles\/polls-representative-samples-often-merit-skepticism-9644248f\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">conduct their polls online<\/a> or via text message. But these often aren\u2019t really random samples. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Even when a polling organization says its sample is \u201cnationally representative,\u201d there can still be biases in its sampling and adjustments. For instance, \u201ccoverage error\u201d happens when not everyone in the population has a chance of being included in a survey.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-3-samples-tend-to-vary-from-populations-just-by-chance\">3. <strong>Samples Tend to Vary From Populations, Just by Chance<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p>Polls often cite a margin of error of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.pewresearch.org\/short-reads\/2020\/08\/05\/key-things-to-know-about-election-polling-in-the-united-states\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">3 percentage points<\/a>, which means that 95% of the time, the poll results should be within 3 percentage points of the real answer: the answer you\u2019d get if you could ask every single voter for their opinion.  However, the margin of error only quantifies the amount of error expected to come from sampling variation. Since there are plenty of other sources of error, as we\u2019ve discussed above, <strong>the average error in a poll is often <\/strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2016\/10\/06\/upshot\/when-you-hear-the-margin-of-error-is-plus-or-minus-3-percent-think-7-instead.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><strong>6 or 7 percentage points<\/strong><\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-other-factors-also-affect-accuracy\"><strong>Other Factors Also Affect Accuracy<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>The accuracy of a poll\u2019s results also depends on some less obvious factors like how the questions <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2019\/03\/22\/politics\/poll-questions-analysis\/index.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">are phrased<\/a>, the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cbsnews.com\/news\/why-question-order-changes-poll-results\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">order of the questions<\/a>, and whether respondents are honest. People <a href=\"https:\/\/www.newsweek.com\/70-republicans-60-democrats-say-people-lie-when-taking-polls-1529841\">tend to suspect<\/a> that poll respondents lie. Some experts<a href=\"https:\/\/techpolicyinstitute.org\/publications\/miscellaneous\/people-lie-when-answering-polls-heres-how-to-fix-it\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"> think they actually do<\/a>, perhaps in part due to the social desirability bias, or the tendency to give an answer that <a href=\"https:\/\/www.psychologytoday.com\/us\/blog\/am-i-my-genes\/202011\/why-the-polls-were-wrong-social-desirability-bias\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">makes them look better<\/a> or feel better about themselves.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Though no polling method is perfect, experts say the most trustworthy polling organizations are <a href=\"https:\/\/scienceexchange.caltech.edu\/topics\/voting-elections\/political-polls-science\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">transparent about their methodology<\/a>. Experts note that polls that are transparent about the answers to these questions <a href=\"https:\/\/fivethirtyeight.com\/features\/the-state-of-the-polls-2019\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">tend to be more accurate<\/a> than those that aren\u2019t transparent.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-what-can-polls-really-tell-us-about-the-election\"><strong>What Can Polls Really Tell Us About the Election?<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>Experts say that while polls can offer useful insights into how people view the candidates and what they think of major issues, estimates of who will actually win an election are <a href=\"https:\/\/www.pewresearch.org\/short-reads\/2020\/08\/05\/key-things-to-know-about-election-polling-in-the-united-states\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">less reliable<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Instead, <strong>polls show us where people stand on an issue or how they regard a candidate at a <\/strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/newshour\/politics\/your-guide-to-understanding-polls\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><strong>single moment in time<\/strong><\/a>. Polls have only a limited ability to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciline.org\/elections\/surveys-polling\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">forecast the choices<\/a> voters will make in the future. Some experts say that while polls are useful at gauging opinion and discovering why people vote the way they do, it\u2019s best to leave it at that. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>How useful are political polls if you\u2019re trying to make election predictions? What else can be learned from them? Political polls collect information on how Americans are thinking about political issues and candidates. However, they should be taken with a grain of salt, as results aren&#8217;t always accurate. Here&#8217;s a look at the usefulness of polls when making political predictions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":122829,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[275,25],"tags":[727],"class_list":["post-122828","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","category-statistics","tag-articles","","tg-column-two"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v24.3 (Yoast SEO v24.3) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Why Political Predictions Shouldn&#039;t Be Made From Polls - Shortform Books<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"How well can polls make political predictions? Not as well as most people think. 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