This has nagged at me forever. While public opinion polling may be, and always has been an inexact science, it is one of the most rigorously thought out and regulated inexact sciences on the planet. Colleges and universities offer entire programs devoted to the arcane science of reading the public.
So, that being said, How did the pollsters get it so wrong in 2016? Almost every national poll going into election day had Clinton with a durable lead, at the edge of or over the margin of error. Likewise, polling of battleground states like Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania showed Clinton with smaller, but still durable leads. And yet, on election day, every one of those states went for Trump by razor thin margins. How could almost all of the reputable pollsters have gotten it so wrong?
But what if the pollsters didn’t get it wrong? What if they asked the right questions, got the answers, ran the programs and algorithms, and came up with accurate polling results based on their data. What if it was accurate? And yet on election day, all of the wheels fell off the wagon. How is this possible?
Here’s how. Tonight on The 11th Hour, host Stephanie Ruhle had former US Ambassador to Russia, Michael McFall on to talk about the Ukraine war. And she asked him a simple question, If so many Russians oppose this war, why does Putin have an 80% popularity for the war with the Russian people? And McFall’s answer knocked the scales from my eyes!
Look, Stephanie. Right now there are tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of Russians who are getting ready to go to jail for 10-15 years simply for protesting the war. Knowing that, if you’re a common Russian citizen, how likely are you to give an honest answer to a state Russian pollster on Putin or the popularity of the war?
There’s your answer to the 2016 polling dilemma right there. The fuckers lied. It used to be that the two parties were pretty much evenly split, but one thing that both sides had in common was that each side was proud of their party affiliation. They didn’t mind answering questions because they at least had intelligent talking points with which to back their opinions.
Trump changed all of that. And the way he did it was to inoculate his supporters with an almost insane dose of paranoia against the Democrats, the system, and the government itself. The band Buffalo Springfield encapsulated the Trump ethos perfectly when they sang;
Paranoia strikes deep…Into your life it will creep…It starts when you’re always afraid…Step out of line, and the man will come, and take you away
Look, it’s one thing for a bunch of disenfranchised, lower educated, racist mob to be proud of standing by Trump. And it’s one thing to be a member of an outlaw motorcycle gang on the weekends. But going into a job interview wearing a black leather vest with the slogan Satan’s Shitkickers MC emblazoned on the back might not be your best career move. There were plenty of people out there who were embarrassed to admit that they backed a racist asshole like Trump, even to a stranger, or over the phone. The pollster didn’t get it wrong, their basic data was flawed.
And it’s never stopped. In 2018, the national anti Trump sentiment was so palpable that everybody saw the blue tsunami coming. But even so, in the last couple of months leading up to the election, the non political Cook Report was predicting that the Democrats would flip 55-60 House seats. They ended up flipping 40. That’s a drop off of about 22%. Why? Because people lied. They didn’t want anybody to know that they still backed Traitor Tot.
Trump may be out of office, but Trumpism is here to stay, at least in the near term. And the number one rule of Trumpism is Never trust the man. The number two rule of Trumpism is Never trust the man! Ask yourself this. If you’re a moderately well off, moderately to highly educated voter, especially in the suburbs, would you want to admit that you back a cranial defective like Marjorie Taylor Greene, or Lauren Boebert? Sweet Jesus, I’d rather die in harness.
The point is this. Not only should every Democratic voter, along with independents, take any poll they see with a cow lick grain of salt, so should the DNC, the DSCC, and the DCCC. Because experience in 3 separate cycles now have shown us that Trombies are lying to the pollsters! And even the Democrats own internal polling may not be safe from the fallout. Run every race as if you’re 10 points down with 4 minutes left in the game.
So true. In the Latest NJ gubernatorial election the polls favored Phil Murphy by a large percentage. On election night is was cat and mouse into the next day. Obviously there was a large republican push to skew polls. As such, Murphy barely campaigned and it almost cost him the election.
Before 2016, I answered all surveys and polls. Then came the election. I will grant that illegal games were played, false info was released, but the real reason for OUR loss was how secure everyone felt secure that no one would vote for this stupid clown and Hillary would win. It was found that, while I waited for 5 hours to cast an early vote for Hillary, 40% of eligible voters (mostly Dems) didn’t vote, certain that Trump would lose. I never answered another survey or poll! Never again would other Dems take things for granted and miss voting because they counted on me or other Dems to do their sacred duty and vote for good government. As said: DO NOT pay any attention to surveys or polls. Do your civic duty — support your candidates but don’t ever answer or pay attention to polls or surveys again!
Mark Twain had it all summed up way back then
“There are three kinds of lies: Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics
The Trump polling crap isn’t new – it’s a variation of what’s known as The Bradley Effect. The name was coined when (Tom?) Bradley was presumed to be comfortably ahead in a CA Governor’s race only to lost to a while Republican – back when CA was more politically balanced than we see in more recent times. I saw it up close and personal after I separated from active duty and registered to vote in Virginia. I think it was 1990 when Doug Wilder was quite comfortably ahead in the polls for Governor in what was then state that was dark pink if not red. Yes, he was unabashedly pro-choice but on other stuff (economics) he was old-school southern Democrat and despite being a black man seemed to have threaded the needle in that vast part of the state that wasn’t northern VA (the DC suburbs) where I lived or the Norfolk area. Yet he won by only about a half of one percent of the vote. It was close enough for a recount but he prevailed to become the nation’s first black Governor.
That settled for me the debate on the Bradley Effect – that people would lie to a pollster rather than admit their racial biases. As you indicate, a large chunk of Trump voters supported him because at heart they are racist fuckwads. I’m talking Confederate rag-flag waving openly racist assholes. Many however don’t believe themselves to have been or be racist. These are the “I have black friends” or I get along fine with black co-workers types of people. I grew up learning an ugly term that sums up how such people think – “good n-word.” They were often blunt about being proud of being so “enlightened” that they could accept SOME non-white people (mostly blacks) as equals. I could write a lengthy piece on how someone might qualify for this designation but the point is that such people get REALLY fucking upset, sometimes to the point of bat-shit insane at any suggestion they are racist!
So it is with Trump voters. ANYONE who voted for and still supports that orange festering fuckwad is racist. They might be the same assholes who wear it on their sleeves and wave their traitorous Confederate rags and other stuff like bumper stickers, or they might be the more subtle ones that maybe even voted for Obama because he gave every appearance of qualifying as a “good n-word” (whether they realized it in their minds or not) but even if they were uncomfortable with Trump they still wanted their fucking tax cuts. And for some less regulation mattered too. So even if Trump’s naked appeal to the white supremacy shitheels made them a little (or even a lot) uncomfortable they CHOSE to set that aside.
As I said an astonishing number of these people (and I know many, and have lost most of my friends from my hometown because I call this out) hotly deny they have a single racist bone in their bodies. But if you have voted for and/or support Trump’s power then you fucking ARE! For anyone reading this (and we do have conservatives that come to this site) who don’t like what I’ve said I’m out of fucks to give. Call me all the names you want but the stronger you deny being racist, the more you rationalize support of Trump the more you prove that while you might be nice to SOME non-white people you are still a fucking racist! (And that holds true for non-whites who support Trump – Uncle Toms hoping to curry favor like Kapos in the Nazi concentration camps)
Pollsters try to correct for the Bradley effect and the more recent Trump Variation but if they got a partial handle on in prior to Trump, when it comes to the Trump Variation all bets are off. 2018 was a sign that maybe with those suburban Republican women Trump got too far out there. If we didn’t pick up as many seats as we should have it was in large measure due to the systemic gerrymandering engineered beginning in 2010. Vote (and Party voting percentage wise) wise we would have picked up even more seats than predicted if district maps were more fair as in pre-2010. However, while this group punished Trump in 2018 enough to flip some districts they returned home to the GOP down ballot in 2020 which means even if they again punished Trump by voting for Biden, they STILL partially supported Trump by flipping back a lot of those close districts!
Basically, they were fine with much of Trump’s policies (including and especially their fucking tax cuts!) but just wanted a less crass messenger so they could continue rationalizing to themselves that they weren’t really racist or ok with a certain amount of racism in our society. So yes, we have to work like we are ten or fifteen points down because that might actually be the case. When it comes to polls, the only one that will matter/count will be released on election night.
No matter what, no matter what polls say (even if things turn and it looks like we’ll be fine) do whatever you have to do and make SURE you cast your goddamned vote! And if able, volunteer to work at polling places to counter the vote suppressing asshats that WILL be out in force both outside and inside – especially now that they have been systematically recruited to be election judges. Georgia’s Kemp (and others) might be crowing that all the outcry with their suppression laws was overblown, but I’m convinced they deliberately and quietly worked on their people to hold back during the primaries to lull everyone into a false sense of security. They are waiting on the general election to unleash the full fury of their efforts to keep Democrats from voting and to count Democrat’s votes.
Excellent observations!… Direct and to the point!… I agree with you 100%… and we NEED to get out these lazy-assed dems in Novemeber…. Forget about what the poles say… They can be wrong BOTH WAYS!
Whose numbers do pollsters call? In 2015 they still called landlines almost exclusively, ignoring the millions who had already given up landlines. People who had moved household, people who nearly exclusively used their mobiles, people who didn’t answer unknown calls were not surveyed at all. Basically, those polled were older, entrenched, repeatedly surveyed. Those of us who gave up our landlines and moved and changed phone companies have been lost forever to the pollsters.
Yeah, but none of that should explain why Trump was consistently behind in the polls. If anything, if the vast majority of poll respondents were on landlines, then Trump SHOULD have polled better than he did. The exit polls, after the election, showed that young, city voters voted for Clinton, not Trump. Older voters–the ones most likely to still use landlines as their primary phone–backed Trump, especially older white voters.
unfortunately…
Um, this was news?
1992. Colorado. A proposition was placed on the ballot which would effectively prohibit cities and towns within the state from offering the LGBT community protection from discrimination. Not too long before the election, a poll was released indicating that the measure would fail by 52-42 (meaning cities and towns could pass ordinances protecting the LGBT community from any discrimination). Election Day came along and the measure passed 53-47 (meaning the state of Colorado could stop any city from enacting bans designed to protect the LGBT community). The amendment never went into effect as Denver city employee Richard Evans challenged the law and a judge put a temporary hold on the bill’s becoming law until he could further examine it; he eventually put a permanent injunction on the amendment and it would be ruled unconstitutional by both the Colorado and US Supreme Courts (the case, Romer v Evans).
There was a LOT of questioning about how the poll “got it wrong” and the most common answer was that the respondents were most likely telling the pollsters the answer they wanted to hear. In other words, they didn’t want the pollsters (who are supposed to be independent and non-judgmental when doing the polls) to think they were intolerant hicks–or you could be frank and just say the bigots didn’t want to be called on their bigotry.
And we saw that happen in pretty much every poll taken in 2016 (and for GOP primary voters, at least until around April when it seemed clear that Trump became the GOP’s front-runner). The voters–especially with the national polls–were too afraid that the pollsters were going to “judge” them negatively for supporting Trump.
Or maybe Russia succeeded in hacking our voting machines more than we realize. All the more reason for Democrats to turn out in droves to compensate for that.