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I’m going to try something a little different today and present an argument in three parts. The goal of this first part is really to lay the groundwork for the other two. All I want to do here is convince you of something that you probably already know. 2020 polling was really, really bad. And from there we’ll move on to examining what that means for the media that relied on these polls and what it meant for the race itself.There are lots of ways we could do this but I’m going to keep it simple and just present a list of examples, starting with one I wrote about Wednesday:
Now let’s move on to something which I don’t think is terribly controversial at this point. Having done this 2 elections in a row, the media’s credibility is pretty well shot. You don’t have to take my word for it. Plenty of observers on the left are saying it right now. Writing at the Atlantic, David Graham has a piece whose headline calls it a catastrophe for American democracy:QuoteThis is a disaster for the polling industry and for media outlets and analysts that package and interpret the polls for public consumption, such as FiveThirtyEight, The New York Times’ Upshot, and The Economist’s election unit. They now face serious existential questions. But the greatest problem posed by the polling crisis is not in the presidential election, where the snapshots provided by polling are ultimately measured against an actual tally of votes: As the political cliché goes, the only poll that matters is on Election Day. The real catastrophe is that the failure of the polls leaves Americans with no reliable way to understand what we as a people think outside of elections—which in turn threatens our ability to make choices, or to cohere as a nation....Professionals in every industry are expected to be more reliable than this and to explain when they get it wrong. So if these pollsters are professionals (not partisans actively working toward an outcome), where is the public explanation of how they got it wrong? After all, we’re not talking about a TV or a settlement here, we’re talking about an industry that plays a key role in our entire democracy.To the extent the pollsters at Quinnipiac or some of the others who were badly off won’t explain precisely what went wrong, people should be able to infer certain things from that. When a man on trial for a crime won’t take the stand or pleads the 5th rather than face questions, there’s probably a reason. It suggests, in this case, that partisanship may have invaded the process in some way and no one wants to admit it. There’s a clear partisan bent to the polling. To restore any confidence the industry needs to offer a convincing non-partisan explanation.
This is a disaster for the polling industry and for media outlets and analysts that package and interpret the polls for public consumption, such as FiveThirtyEight, The New York Times’ Upshot, and The Economist’s election unit. They now face serious existential questions. But the greatest problem posed by the polling crisis is not in the presidential election, where the snapshots provided by polling are ultimately measured against an actual tally of votes: As the political cliché goes, the only poll that matters is on Election Day. The real catastrophe is that the failure of the polls leaves Americans with no reliable way to understand what we as a people think outside of elections—which in turn threatens our ability to make choices, or to cohere as a nation.
The pollsters collectively produced a product which the media eagerly delivered to the American people. And the message was that a “repudiation†of Trump was coming. Since the election, several authors have written about their disappointment that the promised repudiation didn’t happen.This failure impacted both sides, but not equallyMy wife follows someone on Facebook who is a pretty outspoken Democrat. He’s actually a wonderful person who I like a lot but since Tuesday he’s been complaining about how disappointed he is in the results. Again, where is that repudiation that the polls and the media seemed to be promising? Today the Washington Post reported that Joe Biden’s camp was likely just as disappointed:...It’s fair to say most Democrats feel let down at this point. They were promised the moon and what they’ll end up getting is divided government with no way to claim a mandate. That’s obviously not a great situation for a party that spent four years pretending they were the Rebel Alliance from Star Wars about to blow up the Death Star....Now let’s think about the impact bad polling had on Republicans.For months the polls have been telling them one thing, consistently every single day: Trump was going to lose.Not only that, but Republicans were going to lose the Senate and lose more House seats. Democrats were ascendant. The repudiation was coming. Resistance was futile....But getting back to my point, you can’t on the one hand admit that bad polling played a role in shaping how the campaigns spent money and then, at the same time, deny that bad polling played a role in the outcome.Decisions weren’t just being made by campaigns, they were also being made by voters. Whether by incompetence or partisan intent, the pollsters and the media undeniably shaped this race in a way that hurt one party more than the other. No election interference by Russia, Iran or China could ever come close to the impact of daily polls showing Trump was going to be beaten soundly. You literally can’t buy coverage like that.Again, this is the point where I expect the partisans on the left will deny the obvious or shrug it off as whining. But that’s just a dodge. This stuff matters. It has an impact. The media daily acts as if that’s the case. It’s pointless to deny it.
