DES MOINES, Iowa – After months of candidates picking on them, bragging about them, and whining that they’re biased, polls in the 2024 race will get their first reality check with the Iowa caucuses Monday.
Doubts about political polls are as much a part of modern presidential campaigns as visits to the Iowa State Fair and the Red Arrow Diner in Manchester, NH.
But both surveyors themselves and experts in the field are convinced that surveys are generally accurate – if one knows how to analyze them correctly.
“Polls received quite negative attention from most of the candidates. So when you put out a poll and it has a candidate at 4 or 5%, the first thing they do is reject the credibility of that poll,” Spencer Kimball, a professor and executive director of Emerson College Polling, told The Post.
“The general industry takes a lot of hits every time they release a poll because people who don’t like the results will find inconsistencies in the data to try to refute what the data suggests.”
Understand the margin of error
The key to understanding any poll, experts say, is understanding the margin of error.
“When we get down to that level of specificity, polling is not the kind of tool that has that kind of laser capability,” said Monmouth University Voting Institute director Patrick Murray.
“It’s subject to a number of errors, because it’s a poll that’s trying to predict a population that doesn’t exist yet,” he added. “You have to take this with a grain of salt.”
Public perception and media reporting of polls often don’t place enough emphasis on the margin of error, which becomes more important as races across the country tighten, Murray said.
Ron DeSantis hopes to exceed the expectations placed on him in several recent polls in Iowa. Getty Images
“1-point and 3-point polls should be reported the same way: It’s a close race and it could go either way,” he lamented. “But that’s not what happened.”
Samara Klar, a professor at the University of Arizona’s School of Government and Public Policy who studies political behavior, cautioned against taking too much from recent polls on the Nov. 5 general election.
“We see many polls where both candidates are not outside the margin of error. And I don’t know if we can really make assumptions about who will win the general right now,” he said.
“I think polling can help us understand who will be the candidate.”
‘Snapshot in time’
While polls can provide a window into the mood of Americans every day, they’re not crystal balls, according to Klar.
“What polling does very well is tell us what people are thinking right now. “Polling is not necessarily designed to predict what people will do in the future,” he explained.
An important complication of electoral voting is the fact that some voters tend to change their minds late in any campaign.
“If we can predict whether polls are reliable – we can predict the actual results,” Murray said. “The point of the poll right now is to tell you where he stands at the moment.”
Nikki Haley has touted recent polls as evidence that her presidential campaign has been gaining steam in recent weeks. AP
“Things are changing. There’s a lot of money being spent in this election. And generally, people don’t pay attention to a candidate – a president [race] more of an exception, but especially in the down-ballot race,” Kimball added.
“Once people start watching and hearing things, we find that opinions do change and these snapshots in time that might be accurate at one point — they don’t hold their own.”
The uncertain year 2024
This election cycle in particular looks particularly volatile given the confluence of potentially combustible political factors — such as former President Donald Trump’s pending criminal case.
“There has never been more interest in voting, and it has never been more difficult at the same time,” said Don Levy, director of the Siena College Research Institute.
“Trump is working aggressively to try not to go to trial in March. If that experiment happens and you get a steady dose of transcripts from that experiment, comments about that experiment — that can influence voters well.
“And really, you’re going to influence a small group of voters.”
President Biden’s re-election campaign has narrowed the dismal polls against him. Reuters
Worrying questions about Trump’s legal situation, the chaotic geopolitical environment and more could entice voters to change their calculus.
However, if 2024 ends with a 2020 rematch between Trump vs. President Biden, voters may already be very interested, according to Kimball.
“Looking at this from a 30,000-foot view, this should be a very volatile election. There’s a lot going on. There’s a global war going on, there’s an issue here at home,” Kimball said.
“On the other hand, if it ends up being Biden and Trump, you have two known candidates. There is not much more that people need to know,” he continued. “We don’t usually see that kind of rematch.”
But what about 2016?
Perhaps the biggest knock on the polling industry came during the 2016 election when many pollsters seemed to miss Trump’s upset victory over Hillary Clinton.
“We look at what we have done in the past. We know we made mistakes for a variety of reasons in 2016 and 2020,” said Murray, who dismissed the notion that there was a “hidden” vote for the 45th president eight years ago.
“It really comes down to two issues — that the sample is underrepresented by people who don’t have a college degree, and there are a large number of likely Hillary Clinton voters who stay at home,” he said.
Donald Trump has crowed about his lead in recent polls. AP
For Levy, there is a “potentially insufficient number of votes in some Rust Belt states” ahead of the 2016 presidential election and some polls don’t “take into account educational attainment” enough.
He believes that in 2020, “there is a systemic reluctance on the part of Trump supporters who are avid to participate in the polls” and that pollsters in general have recalibrated to account for that.
“Voting as a field is getting better,” he said.
“Are people overestimating Republicans in ’22? I don’t think we did,” he added of the midterm elections, where Democrats performed better than expected. “Maybe some people are so concerned about losing Trump voters … that there might be a tendency to care in that direction.”
While pollsters are getting this election cycle right, they’re not holding their breath for a response.
“I can give you many cases of people calling me to scream and yell at me before the election,” said Levy, “and suddenly when we are right – as we do more often than not – after the election, somehow the phone calls didn’t come and say, ‘Hey, Don, you’re right.'”
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