Public opinion polls are conducted constantly, but they kick into high gear during election years, including this year. Terry Smith, a political science professor at Columbia College in central Missouri, said the way poll results are presented play too big of a role in elections – especially when they get it wrong.
“There have been some well-known disasters – 1936 (when Republican Alf Landon was picked in a straw poll to beat Democrat Franklin Roosevelt in the presidential election), 1948, when they stopped polling three weeks before the election, because all the polls showed (Thomas) Dewey so far ahead of (Harry) Truman,” Smith told Missourinet. “And then, more recently, the poll in 2016.”
That one, taken and released on Election Day, showed Hillary Clinton beating Donald Trump in the presidential race – but that poll turned out to be wrong.
Smith also said poll results depend in part on whether the people being polled give honest answers or whether they “troll the polls.”
“Poll rhymes with troll,” he said. “What happened in (20)16 and (20)20, people would get called and they’d be asked, you know, ‘who’s your presidential preference?’ And they knew it was Trump, but they would say, ‘Well, I haven’t decided yet,’ or ‘I’m voting for Clinton.’ This was intentional.”
Smith said the same thing happened in 2020 during the first Trump/Biden matchup. The percentage of people who lied to pollsters was small but was enough to cause some polls to get the presidential winner wrong.
Smith said most polls have sound methodology, but when it comes to online polls, some can be easy to manipulate.
“The people who are online, many of them, I would be one, have more than one email address,” he said. “And it’s not necessarily connected to your location and/or other things.”
Poll results can also be skewed by changing one or two words in a question. Smith said, though, that polling organizations independent from a political party or candidate are more likely to be more accurate.
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