Politics
Presidential Polls Are in the News. What Do They Really Tell Us?
If you’ve recently noticed more phone calls or texts from numbers you don’t recognize, there’s a chance they’re coming from an election polling center.
Recent polls say presidential candidates Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump are neck and neck.
But what do polls actually tell us and what impact do they have?
Erik Nisbet, a professor of policy analysis and communication at Northwestern University, joined “Chicago Tonight” to break it down.
What Makes a Poll More Reliable?
”One of the key, sort of, shortcuts is, do you recognize who’s doing the poll,” Nisbet said. “Is it coming from a major media outlet? Washington Post, ABC News, New York Times, for example, your local major newspaper. Those polls tend to have higher quality, and you have more confidence in their methodology as representing voters’ opinions accurately.”
What Can the Latest Polls Tell Voters?
A recent poll out of Iowa shows Kamala Harris leading Donald Trump — a state he won in the previous two elections. Iowa wasn’t previously considered a battleground state, so Nisbet said the message this sends is not as clear cut as it may seem.
“That poll was quite a bit of a shocker and outlier,” he said. “The reason that the pollsters said that there is such a shift in Kamala Harris’ favor is because older White women were breaking for her …The question is whether that is an outlier, or possibly tracking a larger trend nationwide in terms of a gender split in this vote.”
How Have Polls Changed?
At one time, polls were conducted door-to-door or through mail-in surveys. Pollsters have since added methods such as online surveys or text messaging. Nisbet said this diversity has been one of the biggest changes.
“The gold standard, though, still is the telephone poll,” he said. “It’s a probability sample to make sure that everyone has the equal chance of being included in the poll. And those are the polls that are conducted by, for example, the New York Times or Washington Post. Those polls are more expensive, they take longer to do, but you can have the confidence that those polls are most accurate when it comes to representing voters’ opinions.”
How Can Voters Use Polls?
While campaigns may use polling results to shape their messaging or support fundraising efforts, Nisbet said voters should look at a variety of sources to understand how candidates are doing.
“I think voters pay attention,” he said. “But really you should pay attention to the big picture. You shouldn’t pay attention to any one single poll. Look at polling averages, look at polling trends, rely on analysis from some of the experts at the major media networks that can give the polls in context, because that’s really what you should be paying attention to.”
