The Effect of Polls in Media on Voter Opinions

Polls are a way for politicians and government officials to know the views of their constituents in order to make the best decisions as representatives. Chapter 5 of the textbook discusses polling practices that give integrity to polls such as taking simple random samples, weighting polls towards the relevant population group, and the use of sampling error indicators. The chapter also discusses the factors that affect political socialization such as family, education, popular culture, media, location, and race. Lastly, the chapter criticizes the shortcomings of polls and how the pollers account for these problems. Polls oftentimes fail to fully represent the public. Many polling practices can be skewed and convoluted in order to make answering polls unclear and and to make proper representation ineffective. Pollers can word questions to lead poll takers into choosing a specific answer which can lead to an inaccurate representation of public opinion. Additionally, the manner in which polls are taken can be very ineffective, tedious, and expensive.

Polls have proven to be a very influential form of assessment and they can oftentimes aid in the spreading of false, biased, or unevenly skewed information, thereby failing as an element of government. Something that wasn’t explicitly mentioned in the reading was the strong role that polls play in affecting voter decisions. A very recent example of this was the 2016 election predictions. On November 7. 2016, the day before the 2016 election, almost all polls taken indicated Hillary Clinton would take the victory over Donald Trump, and as we all know that prediction was very incorrect as Donald Trump managed to secure a majority of electoral votes and seize the presidency. This lack of accuracy actually caused a lot of undecided voters to sway their vote to Donald Trump, thereby leading us into the mess that we’re in now.

Since media is one of the factors affecting public opinion, and polls differ between news media networks and regions, the polls that are shown in news media can perpetuate and lengthen the divide between voters by causing certain groups of people to feel a certain way about certain issues. Also, another factor is the lack of education among voters. If voters are taking polls about policy that they have never read but have seen on Fox News, they are more likely to agree with however their demographic voted in Fox News poll, which is almost certain to be skewed to support and promote the conservative view. This also increases the divide between the two political parties.

Lastly, I’d like to consider the use of polls in actually creating policy. People are constantly asked whether or not they want a certain policy put in place, but to what extent do those polls matter? For example, Donald Trump’s approval rating poll continues to decrease and has hit an all-time low but there is no sign that he’s changing the way he runs the country to cater to his constituents. I think there should be a law put into place that makes the tampering and skewing of polls illegal and that forces representatives to consider poll opinions more seriously.

4 Responses to "The Effect of Polls in Media on Voter Opinions"

Declan Horrigan says:

October 9, 2017 at 12:50 am

I found the point made at end of your post very interesting as I had never thought about the relevance and importance of polls related to the implementation of certain policies and how that is related to Trump’s approval ratings. I would like to extend on the point you made that even though Trump’s approval ratings are so low, he shows no sign of changing the way he will run the country to be more receptive to his constituents. I believe, one of the reasons his approval ratings are so low is because of the slew of Executive Orders that he has signed. An executive order doesn’t need the approval from Congress, and therefore does not need the approval of the people of the United States, the constituents. An article in The Hill newspaper written on April 29th by Devin Henry and Timothy Cama, it states “President Trump signed the 30th executive order of his presidency on Friday, capping off a whirlwind period that produced more orders in his first 100 days than for any president since Harry Truman.” There has been a lot of controversy over many specific instances of Trump’s Executive Orders, but in general, many people are concerned with the sheer presence that he is implementing them. I believe that because he not only orders them on controversial issues but uses them at this rapid rate, his approval ratings are very low and continue to go down because he is not listening to his constituents.

http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/331134-trump-using-executive-orders-at-unprecedented-pace
Allison McLaughlin says:

October 11, 2017 at 3:21 pm

I like how you pointed out the effect that polls on the most recent election. You mentioned how the polls predicting Hillary to win influenced many people to vote for Trump. Another effect I think that these polls had was to sway people that were against Trump to feel secure that Hillary would win and therefore did not feel any necessity to go and vote. I also thought your last suggestion was very interesting, however I see some flaws with it. Our government has a system in place to implement bills that the people want and interest groups and lobbyists exist to be the connection between public opinion and the government. For the government to rely exclusively on polls could result in very skewed policy decisions since polls are often inaccurate. Further, it would be nice for all polls to be accurate, however I think it is part of the nature of the media for independent polls to be created, and not all polls could be monitored for accuracy.
Alice Depasse says:

October 11, 2017 at 10:39 pm

It is true that often people will look at polls in politics and consider it accurate to a significant degree, which the 2016 election has shown can effect how people will vote. This could potentially be tactics that candidates use in the future to get more people to turn up for voting. Although after the past election, there is serious reason to believe that in 2020 there will be a serious increase in voter turnout regardless of polls and tactics. However, polling in politics is just one way in which polling can mislead people.

If framing can change so much of a person’s answer, then surely stating polling for any kind of research should be banned. It has been proven to be unreliable and therefore why should it be trusted? As you have already mentioned, it has done no good at influencing Trump’s behavior. It is also clearly effected the voter turn out, therefore it can be argued that it influenced the outcome of the election. Poll results in other areas may be equally as unreliable, yet they have been used as research. Surely, there are now more costs then benefits to using all these polls, especially regarding politics.
Stephanie Hughes says:

October 12, 2017 at 12:41 pm

What is the purpose of polling if not to give a “snapshot” of public opinion? When public opinion is skewed and tampered with, policymakers cannot accurately represent the people and citizens can be influenced to believe false truths. Your concluding paragraph really struck me. The President’s approval rating is horrendously low, yet there has been no indication of a change in course for the way our government is being run. This is an injustice and, frankly, a mockery of democracy. It is clear that polling is not effecting the policymaking process in the way that it should.

When one polling center says one thing and another says the opposite, who is the public to believe? There needs to be regulation to curb these inconsistencies because the people of our nation deserve to see the full picture in order to make the best decisions for themselves and to have an accurate “snapshot” of the sentiments of their compatriots. Regulation of this kind may look something like requiring media outlets to cite at least 3 different polling centers when making predictions. This is a small step, but it would foster a better sense of public opinion in the people, while simultaneously revealing how easy it is to skew polls to favor a political viewpoint. Perhaps, in turn, this would urge polling centers to be more honest.

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