Posted on 10/31/2006 6:01:07 AM PST by new yorker 77
When a reporter for The New York Times Magazine recently asked White House political adviser Karl Rove if President Bush is too closely identified with big business at a time of corporate scandal, Rove began reciting the latest poll findings.
"Forty-five percent of the people think Bush's proposals for reforming accounting go too far or are about right," he noted, "versus 39 percent who say they do not go far enough. Now that's compared to 39 percent who said they go too far or are about right a month ago, and 43 who said they do not go far enough."
Then Rove stopped, realizing he was making his boss look like a human windsock. "Not that we spend a lot of time on these," he assured his listener.
Bush is hardly the first president to keep a close eye on such data. Bill Clinton commissioned a poll to find out if he should come clean about the entire Monica Lewinsky scandal. He was told Americans could forgive adultery but not perjury and obstruction of justice, and--well, you know the rest.
Once upon a time, politicians weighing policy decisions had to rely on their own sense of what was right and what was appealing to voters. Today, officeholders and candidates are all hooked up to IVs that continuously drip fresh poll data directly into their veins. An entire industry has grown up to tell them what every demographic group thinks about every conceivable issue and how each segment of the electorate may be won over by tweaking the candidate's message.
But last week's election outcomes left some pollsters resembling contestants trying to catch a greased pig--with their quarry escaping and their faces splattered with mud. A late Zogby poll had Republican Jim Ryan a hair ahead of Rod Blagojevich in the Illinois governor's race, but the Democrat won by seven points. An Atlanta Journal-Constitution/WSB-TV survey a week before Election Day had Republican Sonny Perdue trailing incumbent Georgia Gov. Roy Barnes by 11 points. When the votes were counted, Perdue won by five points.
The last polls in Minnesota couldn't be wrong, because one of them had Democrat Walter Mondale with a five-point lead in the U.S. Senate race, while another had Republican Norm Coleman ahead by six. (Coleman won.)
Failures like these are not the product of bad luck or incompetence but of changes that pollsters have not been able to cope with. Factors beyond their control are making it harder and harder to measure and interpret what the public thinks.
One is that a lot of people simply refuse to pick up the phone and answer questions. About the only public sentiment that pollsters can vouch for is that cold calls from strangers are about as popular as West Nile virus.
The rise of cell phones, which generally don't get called, has added another hurdle. The problem has gotten so big that Karlyn Bowman, a polling expert at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, says, "I expect that in 10 years, phone interviews will be a thing of the past, replaced by Internet polling."
Political polls also have to make adjustments to reflect how likely people are to vote, since Candidate A won't win if he has lots of supporters who stay home on Election Day. Such adjustments become harder as American society grows more diverse, because new ethnic groups may not follow the same patterns as older ones. Even if you can get people to tell you whom they plan to vote for, you may have no idea which candidate is ahead.
Surveys can still yield lots of useful information, if the pollster has the time and money to keep going back to non-responders to make sure the sample is representative. In the heat of a campaign, that option doesn't exist. So polls often mislead.
But politicians and campaign managers continue to use them for lack of anything better. At some point, though, they may decide it makes more sense to hire an astrologer. They may have to confront a new environment in which they put their finger to the wind and find there is no wind.
Most people go into politics with some clear ideas of what they want to accomplish, but most end up parroting poll-tested slogans that some consultant says will charm (or fool) voters. They'll change their approach only if they learn that the polls are unreliable.
That development might put a lot of political consultants out of business. But it wouldn't be a bad thing if our leaders spent less time trying to figure out what the citizenry believes and more figuring out what they believe.
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E-mail: schapman@tribune.com
Copyright © 2002, Chicago Tribune
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." -Manuel II Paleologus
Another use for polls is to push a political agenda, especially used by organizations who are not supposed to. It's a great way for a nonpartisan org to become partisan.
"Are you aware that Mary Candidate supports grinding babies and filtering them to make baby oil?"
"If you knew that John Hopeful wants to ban .22 target guns, would you be A) more likely or B) less likely to vote for him?"
They are "fake but accurate."
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