The death of the polls

Again, the biggest losers in the US election are the polls. Whatever the end result, winning Joe Biden or Donald Trump, the expected democratic tide never came. Instead, we are seeing elections on a tightrope. “The polling industry is a mess,” wrote the Politic, this Wednesday, in a particularly caustic newsletter. “And it should have blown.”

Part of the discrepancy may be justified by the complexity of the US electoral system, which assigns a state’s total votes to the winner. However, national surveys haven’t fared much better than in swing states. On the morning of November 3, a collection of RealClearPolitics polls gave Biden a whopping 7.4% margin; hours later, it was clear that the real margin would be just over 2%.

For many who do not forget 2016, when Hillary Clinton ended up defeated even with the polls in her favor, this is yet another confirmation of the so-called “shy voter of Trump”. In other words, “in an America where Trump supporters are routinely called racists, it is not surprising that many prefer to keep their political orientation to themselves,” American analyst Salvatore Babones said in a column in Sydney Morning Herald.

We have further indication of this by looking at Florida, a crucial swing state where virtually all polls have given Biden the win, albeit within the margin of error. The only one who got it right was Rasmussen’s – the difference from the others is that, instead of being people collecting data, they did it with pre-recorded telephone messages.

Another factor is Trump’s constant animosity towards the polls, fueled by the fact that they underestimate his supporters, which makes it more likely that his supporters will not respond to requests in a vicious circle.

This could be solved through predictive models, as in other cases: We know that African Americans have lower response rates, for example, soon the numbers are inflated. The problem is that “if this is unrelated to known characteristics, such as ethnicity and gender, pollsters have no way of knowing”, noted analyst Dan Cassino, a Harvard Business Review.

However, it’s not just US polls that have problems. The reason appears to be systemic: The percentage of people who responded to surveys has plummeted in recent years, from 36% two decades ago to 6%, according to the Pew Research Center.

“The low response rates are a plague for even the best polls due to the widespread use of caller ID technology,” Cassino explained. After all, in a world where more and more sales calls are being received, who still answers unknown numbers?

“Journalists and the general public would do well to treat polls with caution,” recommended W. Joseph Campbell, author of Lost in a Gallup: Polling Failure in US Presidential Elections, no The hill. “Polls are not to be rejected or ignored. But it is prudent to realize that they have a blurred past, and that even the best of them have inherent limitations ”.