You don’t need me to tell you that political pollsters have hit a bad patch.
In Wisconsin, Francesca Hong was the overwhelming favorite for the Democratic nomination for governor, leading in the polls just before the primary by roughly 20 percentage points. She lost narrowly to David Crowley.
In Michigan, Abdul El-Sayed held a comfortable lead over Haley Stevens in the race for the Democratic Senate nomination, according to the polls — by margins of 11 percent to 19 percent. He held on to win by one percentage point.
In Los Angeles, a recent poll indicated Mayor Karen Bass held a large lead over her opponent, Councilmember Nithya Raman. The poll, which was reported by the California Post, turned out to be fake.
. . .
Such wildly misleading campaign coverage forces journalists to examine the shortcomings of a key part of their election toolkit:
The New York Times: How the Polls Got It So Wrong in Wisconsin
Poynter: A fake poll made real news. What does that say about political polling?
Status: The media’s fake poll flub
American Crisis, by Margaret Sullivan: Polls, pundits and horserace coverage are NOT what we need for the midterms
The New York Times: Why Polling Chaos Could Create Big Problems for American Politics
So reputable news organizations presented what was in essence a fiction in each of those races. And as the Times points out, polls no longer measure elections so much as drive them:
All of this is happening at the dawn of the 2028 presidential primary season, when dozens of candidates are likely to be defined in part by polls that cement impressions and set narratives that may not be tethered to political reality.
“Every candidate in 2028 will have their own cooked poll factory,” said Lis Smith, a Democratic strategist who was a senior aide on Pete Buttigieg’s 2020 campaign for president. “Polls now are not just a way of measuring the horse race. It’s a way for candidates and their allies to influence the horse race.”
While we can wring our hands about news organizations making polls the core of campaign coverage, Sullivan laments other foibles:
The media also is hung up on sticking labels on Democratic factions — socialist! centrist! progressive! — and in pointing out the extremes on the left while normalizing the extremes on the right.
Sullivan points to a post by former newspaper executive Melanie Sill:
Today’s home pages and election roundups are a case in point: They view outcomes entirely in the context of political factions. I don’t think most voters think that way.
So far in the midterms, major outlets are focusing coverage on fighting within major political parties instead of on voters and the issues that Americans care about. Missing almost entirely: What are candidates promising, or what have they done, about health care, inflation, and the health of our democracy?
I suspect more than one newsroom leader would argue that they provide all the information voters need, thank you very much. That amid the horserace coverage, citizens can find candidate positions on a wide array of issues.
I know they believe that. I’ve listened to them make that case. But it’s disingenuous.
If the point of campaign coverage is to help citizens with their core responsibility in a democracy — voting — why run polls at all? What value do they have in deciding the direction of the community — the town, county, state, or country?
Newsroom self-reflection may extend to the accuracy of polls, but not to the point of polls. News organizations could focus election coverage on producing a handbook of sorts for voters: comparing the needs of the community with the positions and experiences of the candidates.
Such a project would be immensely valuable to citizens, but not to the business of campaign coverage. Such a project would not entice citizen-consumers to return day-in and day-out to their screens to follow the entertainment of politics as it is packaged by news organizations.
In short, news as a democracy support service is not profitable. Election coverage needs to pay the bills. That is the price we pay for monetizing democratic decision-making.
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