As Denise-Marie Ordway explains, "When journalists covering elections focus primarily on who's winning or losing instead of policy issues - what's known as horse race reporting - voters, candidates and the news industry itself suffer." Horse race coverage, first of all, frames elections into sporting events. It turns democracy into a game of winners and losers, lowers turnout and is often wrong. News media coverage of polling, regardless of the accuracy of the polls, doesn't just lower voter turnout it turns coverage of elections into a focus on the horse race, rather than the issues. When polls are used to help the news media frame its coverage of elections, the results are highly negative. They are often the dominant source of information used by news organizations covering elections. Polls can also help identify what is important to voters, but again, if respondents are skewed, it isn't clear how useful that may really be.īut that's the thing - polls aren't just consumed by those working on campaigns. They identify the close calls so a campaign can put more effort where it will matter. To the extent that polls help, when they are accurate, they can determine where energies and resources are best directed. Polls shouldn't be for voters, but rather for strategists. In fact, the only helpful polls for turnout are the ones that suggest that the outcome of the election is a toss-up. Research shows polls depress turnout, especially if one's candidate is shown to have either a low or a high chance of winning. And when they do, voting plans can change. But what's even worse? The people who don't answer polls do look at them. So, polls get it wrong because only weird people answer them. For us, it isn't about political engagement or social trust - it is about how we interact with the onslaught of unsolicited communication in our faces every day.įormer employees of famed GOP pollster Frank Luntz say his work is a "scam" We aren't answering polls because we are already getting so much spam that when we see an unknown number or a random text or email, we just ignore or delete it. That's the bucket I and my friends are in. Other factors include who answers phone calls from unknown numbers, who takes the time to do online surveys, and who will answer a random text. (They came to this conclusion via a survey, though - how's that for a head-scratcher.) Research also shows that millennials answer surveys far less frequently than older generations. Research has shown that conspiracy theorists, like followers of QAnon, aren't going to answer a poll.īut the breakdown isn't only across parties. People who answer polls are more politically engaged and have higher social trust, a trait that correlates with being a Democrat. Shor also contends that the type of person who answers a poll tends to skew Democrat, which leads to overestimating the Democratic vote. The people who don't answer polls do look at them. Even weirder, we seem pretty smug about the whole thing. ![]() Who has time for that? Who picks up calls from unknown numbers? I have yet to find a single friend who tells me they have answered a poll. Sometimes when I am out with friends we joke that none of us has ever done one. ![]() I can also be counted on to never, ever answer a poll - whether the requests come to me via email, spam call or text. By the time we are a few days from Election Day, I am checking them about 10 times a day. When they offer favorable results, I worry they will change. When they don't, I keep checking, hoping that their predictions will shift. I want them to tell me that the candidates I care about are going to win. ![]() If they don't give me the answers I like, I keep looking. I look at them seeking some sort of certainty. I go to FiveThirtyEight, then to the Washington Post, then check Quinnipiac. Each morning when I wake up, and occasionally when I doom scroll at 3 a.m., I obsessively check the polls. In the days leading up to an election, I have two predictable habits.
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