As we discussed in class, public opinion polling has recently become one of the most important aspects of modern politics. \u00a0Its ability to gauge public opinion on issues, policies, and candidates has allowed politicians and government officials to tailor their policy choices to the electorate. \u00a0This is done both in order to pass the most favored policy and, more cynically, to maintain their offices in an increasingly divisive political environment. \u00a0However, polling faces a wide variety of issues. \u00a0These issues came to public prominence during and immediately following the 2016 Presidential Election, during which all polling seemed to fall flat. \u00a0The issues present in the 2016 election seemed to be deeply exacerbated versions of the issues presented in the textbook.<\/p>\n
One of the most prominent issues in public opinion polling is sampling. \u00a0This was one of the biggest problems pollsters faced in the 2016 election for a wide variety of reasons. \u00a0As discussed in the textbook, fewer and fewer people use landline phones and polling via cell phone is much easier to avoid. \u00a0This results in the reduced randomness of the sample, as those with landlines can be overrepresented. \u00a0Similarly, as technology becomes more advanced, internet polling has become more common. \u00a0Internet polling brings with it a myriad of problems, especially due to high levels of non-response and only the most passionate taking the time to actually take the poll. \u00a0These systemic issues in the field of opinion polling have shown a massive under-representation of the Trump voter base. \u00a0As many in Trump\u2019s base of support in swing states were lower income and less educated, they would inherently mistrust the polling agencies and refuse to participate in the poll (Mercer). \u00a0Other issues in the 2016 election were what Mercer of the Pew Research Center called \u201cshy-Trumpers\u201d who voted for the President, yet did not express this support publicly, and the inability of pollsters to predict which demographics will vote and in what quantity. \u00a0In this way, many people who opposed President Trump may have decided to stay home due to their disdain for Secretary Clinton or other deciding factors.<\/p>\n
The biggest issue, however, was the failure of many pollsters to consider the possibility of a popular vote victory, but an electoral college defeat. Newkirk of The Atlantic<\/i> writes that the discrepancy between electoral results and the popular vote has grown much wider over the course of the past 50 years, an issue which is abundantly clear in the elections of 1972, 1984, 2000, and 2016. \u00a0Many pollsters, like Nate Silver, took this issue and many others into account in determining their polling model. \u00a0Silver, the founder of FiveThirtyEight, aggregated all polling his system deemed credible and used the electoral college and polling trend lines to determine the candidate\u2019s chance of winning. \u00a0While his model was still massively inaccurate in 2016, his deeply scientific method was still the most successful of any major media outlet and any failure can be contributed to these glaring, systemic issues in public opinion polling.<\/p>\n
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