The Inaccuracy of Polling in Presidential and Political Campaigns
Our media has abdicated its responsibility and has turned into advocacy outlets.
While political campaigns and media outlets thrive on polling American citizens, they are inherently inaccurate, so why do we pay attention to them? After Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. suspended his presidential race yesterday, polling organizations are clamoring to see how this will affect the 2024 presidential race. Still, their results must be more accurate while the media and American people lap it up.
These polls will be inherently flawed and inaccurate because they often need to include all candidates who will be on the ballot. Suppose you only include some of those on the ballot garnering votes. In that case, you have unreliable data, as those candidates not mentioned in polling will be getting some votes, and even if they are only getting 1% of the vote in a close race, that can be a deciding factor.
For example, here in Florida, five names will be printed on the ballot for the U.S. Senate, yet the media and polling organizations only mention two. Why not say the Libertarian Party’s Feena Boanan, a qualified candidate, as her name will be on the ballot alongside Rick Scott and Debbie Mucarsel-Powell?
So, these poll numbers are inaccurate since they only include 2 of the five candidates on Florida voter’s ballots. Take 2016, for example, when most polls showed Hillary Clinton leading Donald Trump, and Trump won. As noted in a CNBC article, “Among the big misses that have scarred the polling industry is the 2016 presidential election when various headlines littered the news, claiming that Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s chances of winning against Republican nominee Donald Trump were around 90%.” This resulted in many Clinton supporters falsely believing the election was ‘stolen’ and Hillary Clinton herself calling Trump an ‘illegitimate president.’
Even today, after being called out multiple times, polling organizations and the media continue to exclude candidates who will impact political races. How often have you heard Libertarian Chase Oliver or Green Party Jill Stein’s names in the legacy media’s coverage of the 2024 presidential campaign? Even though both are legitimate, qualified candidates, they are neither regularly polled nor covered alongside Trump or Harris. Perhaps some other candidates align with one’s values, yet the media keeps them out of the spotlight.
The exclusion of Libertarian and independent candidates from polling results in a distorted and inaccurate view of political races. So, why do the legacy media report these numbers even though they must know they are incorrect and have a long history of being wrong? It is akin to navigating a sailboat using a broken compass that you know to be broken but use anyway. Perhaps since polling organizations seem unable to give us numbers that are close to accurate, we must now stop relying on them.
We need polling organizations to include all ballot-listed candidates and encourage media outlets to do the same in their coverage. After all, isn’t it the media’s job to fully inform the public? How outrageous is it that when you appear at your voting precinct to vote, you’ve only heard of 2 of the five candidates printed in front of you? The media has failed “journalism 101.” The concept of the news media or press as a fourth estate stems from a belief that the media's responsibility to inform the populace is essential to the healthy functioning constitutional republic. Sadly, our media has abdicated this responsibility and has turned into advocacy outlets.