Read This If You Still Think Political Polls Mean Anything

zero hedge ^ | 2 July 2016 | http://www.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden

[vannrox]

As a species, humans tend to behave as a herd, following one another in opinion and action — whether or not the consequences for doing so are dire. Of course, politicians and others holding seats of power, fully cognizant of the opportunities provided by this herd mentality, deftly manipulate the masses — particularly through public polls during the lead-up to presidential elections.

Most everyone comprehends how bias-infused political polling can be; however, the extent such polls play in the outcome of elections — and, conversely, how their artfully constructed questions and population samples often miss the mark — makes polling an essentially needless, if not dangerous, facet of the American electoral season.

Polls, to put it plainly, are propaganda — and have been for decades — but one particular election handily evidences this, and offers chilling insight into this year’s presidential race: the 1980 election between incumbent President Jimmy Carter and challenger Ronald Reagan.

Polls, for months, predicted either Carter’s win or declared the race anyone’s guess; but when Reagan managed a landslide victory — veritably crushing his opponent — politicians and the public, alike, revisited polls to parse out how pollsters managed such skewed and inaccurate forecasts.

“For weeks before the presidential election, the gurus of public opinion polling were nearly unanimous in their findings,” wrote John F. Stacks for TIME in April 1980. “In survey after survey, they agreed that the coming choice between President Jimmy Carter and challenger Ronald Reagan was ‘too close to call.’ A few points at most, they said, separated the two major contenders.

“But when the votes were counted, the former California Governor had defeated Carter by a margin of 51% to 41% in the popular vote — a rout for a U.S. presidential race. In the electoral college, the Reagan victory was a 10-to-1 avalanche that left the President holding only six states and the District of Columbia.” In countless analyses of Carter’s staggering defeat in the face of opinion polling, several issues emerged just as relevant now as they were at the beginning of the 80s.

Noting that in the 30 years prior to the 1980 discrepancy, election results had largely concurred with pre-election polling, Stacks explained, the “spreading use of polls by the press and television has an important, if unmeasurable, effect on how voters perceive the candidates and the campaign, creating a kind of synergistic effect: the more a candidate rises in the polls, the more voters seem to take him seriously.”

Déjà vu, much?

Add the Internet’s undeniably critical role to the press and TV Stacks describes, when examining Donald Trump’s astronomically successful, albeit darkly negative, campaign — which had, at first, been taken less seriously than if Donald Duck had announced joining the race — and the demonstrative importance of polling in elections becomes markedly clear.

But even further, a parallel drawn by Victor Davis Hanson for Real Clear Politics between the 1980 and 2012 elections more closely - if not uncannily - relates to this year’s dogfight for the White House. Using the examples of Carter’s highly contentious economic policies and the Iran hostage crisis as a backdrop, Hanson noted, with emphasis added:

“Without a record to defend, Carter instead pounded Reagan as too ill-informed and too dangerous to be president.” If you’ve even set foot in the United States over the past few months, that statement sounds like strategy ripped straight from the Hillary Clinton campaign playbook in its no holds barred assault on the character of the erratic demagogue, Trump.

Notably, in Carter’s case, that strategy cum character assassination — all comments on validity aside — didn’t exactly work out so well.

Hanson also aptly surmised Reagan’s bevy of gaffes — ordinarily the cause of a candidate’s downfall — were a moot point in conjunction with tepid support for Carter in the national vote. In fact, describing the incumbent’s support base as “divided and indifferent” certainly echoes the country’s ambivalence to Hillary Clinton’s scandal-plagued campaign — not to mention widespread rumors of electoral fraud, proven media complicity, and multiple ongoing criminal and corruption investigations.

Even recent opinion polls seem to mimic the period prior to the 1980 election, both in inexplicable public support for Clinton — how many of you have met actual Hillary fans? — and in discrepancies surrounding what her actual lead might be.

Consider polling numbers from the last few weeks, alone. Voters’ preference for either Clinton or Trump diverged so sharply depending on which outlet performed the survey, it appeared the answers might as well have been pulled from thin air.

In a general election match-up between the two presumptive nominees, on June 14, Bloomberg found Clinton with a whopping 12 percentage point lead over Trump, while Fox News yesterday handily tailored her lead to just 6 points. Quinnipiac University, on the other hand, released survey results Wednesday showing the two in a virtual dead heat, with Hillary’s lead at just 2 points.

In other words, polling in 2016 remains as much an arbitrary slave of propaganda as it had been in 1980.

“At the heart of the controversy is the fact that no published survey detected the Reagan landslide before it actually happened,” Stacks wrote. “Three weeks before the election, for example, TIME’s polling firm, Yankelovich, Skelly and White, produced a survey of 1,632 registered voters showing the race almost dead even, as did a private survey by Caddell. Two weeks later, a survey by CBS News and the New York Times showed about the same situation.” Returning to the herd analogy, the problem with propagandic and arbitrary polls is that people tend to blindly lend them a degree of credence — they listen, and they follow each other’s lead. The Associated Press’ wholly unfounded crowning of Clinton as the presumptive nominee the day prior to California’s critical primary had the desired effect — likely dampening the spirits of already-dejected Sanders voters and keeping them from ‘bothering’ to vote at all.

But Clinton’s inordinately aggressive campaign might be forgetting the lessons Carter’s learned over three decades ago: people generally don’t respond well to arrogant posturing and negativity. And no matter what the polls claim about popular opinion, the people will ultimately decide in November who they favor — or who disgusts them less.

And in 2016, that matter is truly up for debate.

[vannrox]

Very interesting...

[Roccus]

When a poll claims to be of 600, 1000, 1200 (whatever amount) likely, registered or whatever criteria voters, I would like to know how many calls it took to reach that number.

I NEVER answer polls. I know of NO ONE who admits to answering polls. Who is it exactly that answers these polls and how wide a net must be cast to find them?

[Grampa Dave]

Short and maybe an original study of Carter wins:

Special Report
How Carter Beat Reagan
Washington Post admits polling was “in-kind contribution”; New York Times agenda polling.
By Jeffrey Lord – 9.25.12
Dick Morris is right.

Here’s something Dick Morris doesn’t mention. And he’s charitable.

Remember when Jimmy Carter beat Ronald Reagan in 1980?

That’s right. Jimmy Carter beat Ronald Reagan in 1980.

In a series of nine stories in 1980 on “Crucial States” — battleground states as they are known today — the New York Times repeatedly told readers then-President Carter was in a close and decidedly winnable race with the former California governor. And used polling data from the New York Times/CBS polls to back up its stories.

Four years later, it was the Washington Post that played the polling game — and when called out by Reagan campaign manager Ed Rollins a famous Post executive called his paper’s polling an “in-kind contribution to the Mondale campaign.” Mondale, of course, being then-President Reagan’s 1984 opponent and Carter’s vice president.

All of which will doubtless serve as a reminder of just how blatantly polling data is manipulated by liberal media — used essentially as a political weapon to support the liberal of the moment, whether Jimmy Carter in 1980, Walter Mondale in 1984 — or Barack Obama in 2012.
First the Times in 1980 and how it played the polling game.
The states involved, and the datelines for the stories:
· California — October 6, 1980
· Texas — October 8, 1980
· Pennsylvania — October 10, 1980
· Illinois — October 13, 1980
· Ohio — October 15, 1980
· New Jersey — October 16, 1980
· Florida — October 19, 1980
· New York — October 21, 1980
· Michigan — October 23, 1980

Of these nine only one was depicted as “likely” for Reagan: Reagan’s own California. A second — New Jersey — was presented as a state that “appears to support” Reagan.

The Times led their readers to believe that each of the remaining seven states were “close” — or the Times had Carter leading outright.

In every single case the Times was proven grossly wrong on election day. Reagan in fact carried every one of the nine states.

Here is how the Times played the game with the seven of the nine states in question.

• Texas: In a story datelined October 8 from Houston, the Times headlined:

Texas Looming as a Close Battle Between President and Reagan
The Reagan-Carter race in Texas, the paper claimed, had “suddenly tightened and now shapes up as a close, bruising battle to the finish.” The paper said “a New York Times/CBS News Poll, the second of seven in crucial big states, showing the Reagan-Carter race now a virtual dead heat despite a string of earlier polls on both sides that had shown the state leaning toward Mr. Reagan.”

The narrative? It was like the famous scene in the Wizard of Oz where Dorothy and her friends stare in astonishment as dog Toto pulls back the curtain in the wizard’s lair to reveal merely a man bellowing through a microphone. Causing the startled “wizard” caught in the act to frantically start yelling, “Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!” In the case of the Times in its look at Texas in October of 1980 the paper dismissed “a string of earlier polls on both sides” that repeatedly showed Texas going for Reagan. Instead, the Times presented this data:
A survey of 1,050 registered voters, weighted to form a probable electorate, gave Mr. Carter 40 percent support, Mr. Reagan 39 percent, John. B. Anderson, the independent candidate, 3 percent, and 18 percent were undecided. The survey, conducted by telephone from Oct. 1 to Oct. 6, has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.

In other words, the race in Texas is close, assures the Times, with Carter actually in the lead.

What happened? Reagan beat Carter by over 13 points. It wasn’t even close to close.

http://spectator.org/articles/34732/how-carter-beat-reagan

[edie1960]

Extremely insightful analysis.
I just pray that history repeats itself and America elects a strong Patriotic leader (Trump) in November just as she did with Reagan in 1980!!!
We are projecting a lethal image of weakness and are on the brink. President Trump is our last chance to set things right!!

[jdege]

The simple truth is that more and more people simply refuse to talk to pollsters, and that the percentage who will answer are not a representative sample of the population.

[103198]

Another interesting race to observe versus the polling data is the June 10, 2014 primary between Eric Cantor and Dave Brat. The “polls” had Cantor up by 22% - and Brat won by 11%.

[Flavious_Maximus]

I worked in telemarketing for 3 years.

Let me tell you, very often the phone operator (pollster) speaking with the customer will simply ignore whatever the client is telling them. The pollster can just enter their own preference pretending that it is the choice of the client.

This happens ALL THE TIME!

The phone operators are bias and manipulate the data directly.

That’s why phone polls cannot be entirely trusted.

[C210N]

The simple truth is that more and more people simply refuse to talk to pollsters...

To further that thought, many who do answer pollsters are of the "Mark Dice" genre, so no wonder they skew towards absurdity. Clearly, pollsters pay no attention whatsoever to the IQ of the poll-ee, especially, when poll-ee spouts the preferred answers.

[phoneman08]

What is also going to be of interest is the methodology different polls use to determine a likely voter.

If a poll simply uses the tried and true method of assigning a likely voter tag to a respondent based on participation on past elections, will it be as accurate as polling that tags a voter as likely based on how strongly they indicate they will vote?

Something else that I find interesting is that even in the face of recent polling showing Clinton with a rather substantial lead, Trump polls well in the Midwest battleground states. Would seem to indicate that if the popular vote is near even, Trump wins the electoral college.

In a close race, this cycles electoral map will be fascinating. I can envision a scenario where Trump loses Florida, but wins Pennsylvania, Ohio, New Hampshire, Maine, Iowa, and Michigan or Wisconsin.

[Hojczyk]

Back then there was no internet

Just ABC CBS NBC

Media tried real hard to get Carter elected

Reagan was to old and just an actor

He was going to start world war III

nothing new this cycle just the press does not try and hide there favorites this time..

[Hojczyk]

What is the magic secret to post more than 300 words??????????????

[Montana_Sam]

Several years ago I was called one evening and the caller asked if I would answer some questions for some poll. It was a bit weird, because there were a number of topics covered - maybe half a dozen - with several questions about each.

The weird part was that each question was asked in five different forms. Each form was phrased in a way to elicit a more likely response. As an over the top simile, let's say the first question was about breakfast, and there were two forms to the question:

• For breakfast, would you like ground up pig's ears and snouts and tough grizzled left over, unidentifiable meat chunks mixed with ground-up weeds and salt and pepper stuffed in a piece of pig gut fried up in fat?
• For breakfast, would you like some delicious country sausage links?

The questions had to do with same-sex "marriage", grocery stores using plastic bags or paper bags, and a couple of others. Later, we voted on same-sex "marriage" (it is a done deal here in WA state), and on grocery stores using the convenient plastic bags (now banned in Olympia, WA).

It was interesting to hear the variations of the questions, then each question was followed by the, "How would you feel about voting for that measure? Very likely, somewhat likely, likely, somewhat unlikely or highly unlikely?" (I'm paraphrasing, but you get the idea.)

[phoneman08]

Ah, 1980. I do recall well getting steamed reading the editorials in the local rag over lunch.

Newspapers, weeklies, and network evening news was about all we had.

[Montana_Sam]

The point I was trying to make is that polling doesn’t mean squat unless you know both the exact wording/phrasing AND the tone of the question. Without that info, poll results are meaningless.

[Dr. Pritchett]

Polls are ONLY meant to rally one side and discourage the other. I hope the new/social media doesn’t work better now than whatever media was pulling for Carter over Reagan.

[exDemMom]

What is the magic secret to post more than 300 words??????????????

Trouble with your html, maybe?

I have no trouble posting missives of any length. Some of my posts are almost novel-length, in fact.

Whenever I use the preview function and the post cuts off in the middle, I go back and look at the html tags. If part of the tag is missing, or a quotation mark is missing from within a command, or I used an opening command but not a closing command, then the remaining text following the html error does not show up.

For example, to post a link:

< a href="https:www.google.com" >Google< /a >

If either quotation mark or the final "/a" command is missing, the rest of the post disappears.

Note: for the example, I put a space in between the "<" or ">" and the command, so that the html program won't recognize it as a command. If I post the above link command correctly without spaces, it looks like this: Google. You can mouse over it and see the actual link.

[Spok]

Polls, like “news”’ are subject to manipulation like everything else is. Remember how Marx said that literally EVERYTHING is political, from the rising of the sun to the boiling point of water. The irony of the so-called age of information is that most of what we see and hear is unreliable. Divining the truth is as difficult here as it is in North Korea.

[Beagle8U]

“I NEVER answer polls. I know of NO ONE who admits to answering polls. Who is it exactly that answers these polls and how wide a net must be cast to find them?”

I get calls for polls all the time, and I answer them.

[who knows what evil?]

Polls, to put it plainly, are propaganda...

...designed to influence weak minds (women, third worlders, blacks), creating a 'bandwagon' effect...everyone wants to be associated with a 'winner'. More 'conspiratorial' minds may believe that polls are designed to reflect the pre-designed outcomes programmed into the voting machines...

[HANG THE EXPENSE]

I think nowadays they call the races necknneck so when they cheat it looks plausible.The electronic voting is the very worst thing that has happened.