With the election results coming down to the wire (Wisconsin and Arizona were declared for former VP Joe Biden by the Associated Press earlier today), we're hearing more people ask "what the hell is with the polls...again?" Political polling again is facing criticism from the standpoint that many polls were giving Biden wide leads where he won narrowly or lost. Of course, there's the "margin of error" factor that usually hovers around 3 - 4 percent, but some polls were so grossly misleading they should return their fees to their customers. Joshua Keating at Slate writes:
"Data journalism is only as good as the data that goes into it, and it’s already clear that the polls had some big misses this year. The New York Times and the Washington Post ran polls in the past week showing Biden with 17- and 11-point leads in Wisconsin, respectively. Biden led by 10 points in the Upshot’s final polling average for the state. (This was after steps were reportedly taken to avoid the polling misses that the state saw in 2016.) As of Wednesday morning, it’s still very possible Biden will win the state, but it will clearly be much closer than that. Just before the election, the New York Times’ Upshot projected that even with a 2016-level polling error, Biden would win or essentially be tied in Florida. Trump won the state with—as of this morning—a lead of about 3½ points. The Senate picture looks a lot grimmer for Democrats than polls anticipated, and races predicted to be tight, like South Carolina’s closely watched contest between Lindsey Graham and Jaime Harrison, were handily won by Republicans. Cook Political Report editor and widely cited polling guru Dave Wasserman tweeted on Wednesday morning, 'Polls (esp. at district-level) have rarely led us more astray & it’s going to take a long time to unpack.'” (our emphasis)
For what it's worth, polling can drive political contributions, with seemingly close races (like the aforementioned Graham - Harrison race) prompting contributors to take a flyer and open their wallets. Harrison received an avalanche of money in the hopes that he was close to defeating Graham. Bad polling can also drive down participation when voters think their candidate is going to win and they can stay home and watch others vote.
After the 2016 debacle, people were shellshocked at the results, believing the polling that Hillary Clinton would win, despite the last minute sabotage by the Comey memo. The hopes that the Senate would flip and demote or defeat the likes of Moscow Mitch McConnell and Lindsey "Use My Words Against Me" Graham vanished in the "margin of error." We thought after an anticipated shellacking this time that Rethuglicans would think twice about embracing Trumpism. Now, we'll be thinking twice and more about believing "credible" polling that's proven to have been incredible.
BONUS: Steve M. at No More Mister Nice Blog has a plausible explanation (somewhat mirroring SSBC's comment) about what's going on here.
