We see polls all the time whether that be through websites, ads, etc. In class, we discussed how polls are often shown on national television during the season of presidential elections and viewers almost always interpret them to be credible. Although they can give a general overview of current political status, there are also many potential errors to be made that mislead people.
First of all, there’s the issue of sampling. This is one of the most difficult polling factors to get right because so many details can shift the credibility of the entire poll itself. Random sampling is the most reliable way to do this, however, it’s extremely difficult to achieve correctly because of a lack of interest from voters. In other words, people who aren’t interested in participating won’t, and there is no way to make them. If you try to generalize a poll to represent the entire country, it won’t be accurate unless you get as many different areas, ranges of ages, and people as possible.
In addition, the words you use in the questionnaire itself can influence the answers of the voters. This could potentially diminish the validity of the results because the people’s answers aren’t as truthful as they might’ve been if the words used were more neutral. According to the Pew Research Center, people who aren’t as opinionated or passionate about the topic of the poll are likely to be easily influenced by the phrasing alone.
Although it’s very easy to find specific errors in election polling, the main issue around inaccurate results is when they’re publicized to many voters. Often, people watching tv in the evening don’t stop to analyze the validity of the polls that are mentioned in the news. Instead, they tend to simply believe that the information being given is valid, which can influence their political views. Therefore, feeding voters untrue information can be dangerous, in the way that they have the potential to impact election outcomes on a false foundation of information.
I’ve been listing a lot of cons when it comes to using polls to spread election statistics, but there are also upsides. When well done, polls can be very useful to the progression of elections and help the public keep up with the political process. Put simply, we need to be careful of the information presented in the media, and be aware of its credibility.
You bring up a lot of interesting points about potential flaws of polling like representativeness and wording bias that may skew the results. One of my former posts have highlighted when other factors that may skew the poll, particularly during the 1936 elections when "Literary Digest" magazine put out a really flawed poll, which you can see here below.
ReplyDeleteYou also make a good point about how people trust their sources too much, carefree about potential biases and errors that the article or poll may contain, which can result in at-times dangerous consequences, like PizzaGate (to point out the most extreme example). People should look at how the poll was conducted and determine if it is truly representative of the overall population and minimizes it potential biases. No poll is completely free of flaws, but they all have opportunity to minimize them, and people should be encouraged to question their sources at times and test the trustworthiness of where they get their information from.
https://apgovpolitics2019.blogspot.com/2019/11/literary-digest-and-predicting-1936.html