NEW HAVEN, Conn., 11:22 p.m. — In an interview with the pollster John Zogby, the comedian Jon Stewart is discussing on “The Daily Show” the failure of the polls in New Hampshire.
Zogby said the polls were proven wrong because so many voters did not decide for whom to vote until election day. Stewart asked him whether pollsters could have predicted that in advance. Zogby replied that while only a few percent of people polled said they were “undecided,” many were only “soft” supporters of Obama or Clinton, and that should have been a sign that the race was far from over.
Zogby said that point might not have been stressed enough to the media when the polls were announced over the past few days.
“Do the numbers just come in and [journalists] just go, ‘41 - 28, my God!’?” Stewart asked incredulously.
The crowd laughed, and the interview moved on. But, Stewart was right! For better or for worse, that’s exactly how it happens.
Milling around at Saint Anselm College on Saturday night before the televised debates, a Washington correspondent for a major newspaper tapped me on the shoulder.
“Hey, did you hear the news?” he asked excitedly, barely able to contain himself.
No, I told him. What’s up?
“CNN just put out a new poll, just a minute ago,” he said. “They’re tied, 33-33!”
He went off to write a blog entry about it for his newspaper, and so did I. Throughout the night, you could hear that same conversation repeated between scores of other reporters, too. Many other reporters dashed off to send along similar write-ups.
Here, by the way, is where we got our information about the poll. Note how Stewart is more or less correct — the overall numbers are highlighted in the story, and that’s about it (unless you are a statistics major and want to venture an analysis of the raw polling data).
— Thomas Kaplan
4 responses so far ↓
1 2008 Presidential Election » Not a good day to be a pollster - or a journalist // Jan 10, 2008 at 1:40 am
[…] Yale on the Trail put an intriguing blog post on Not a good day to be a pollster - or a journalistHere’s a quick excerpt […]
2 Janet Wu // Jan 11, 2008 at 1:28 pm
As a parent of two students at Yale, I check your website occasionally. I also am a political reporter for a Boston television station. I was in New Hampshire covering the primary last week, speaking with all campaigns, witnessing many events as they unfolded daily. Terry McCauliffe, Clinton’s National Campaign Manager, told me on live station the night of the election that even their own pollsters had it wrong. No one in the Clinton campaign had any idea it would be as close as it was until 6 pm Tuesday night or that HRC could possibly win until after 8 pm. I also know this to be true because on Monday and Tuesday morning, high level Clinton staffers were privately conceding it would be a bad night for them. Bottom line: to highlight one set of numbers is bad reporing. To write a story based on numerous polls with similar results is responsible journalism. This also was a rare occurrence. After 30 years of political reporting, I can not remember another major election that resulted in such a wide discrepancy between polling data and actual results. To blame the media for irresponsible reporting only reveals bad reporting on your part. Please check your facts before using anecdotal events as evidence.
3 Thomas Kaplan // Jan 11, 2008 at 7:35 pm
Thanks for your comments! You’re right — all the polls were equally wrong, more or less. But I should been a little more specific with my criticism here:
The failing of journalists — myself included — was the over-reliance on polls to an extent that the primary was declared over before the first voter even went to cast his vote on Tuesday.
I’ll defer to Tom Brokaw, who, on MSNBC late Tuesday night, suggested that the media needs to “temper that temptation to constantly try to get ahead of what the voters are deciding.”
“You know what I think we’re going to have to go back and do?” Brokaw asked. “Wait for the voters to make their judgment.”
On his blog, Brian Williams made a similar point, predicting the fallout of the whole mess.
“We in the media will beat ourselves (and deservedly so) for reaching conclusions before the voters have spoken,” he wrote. “A further prediction? Give us a few weeks — we will promptly forget the lessons of this debacle in polling, predictions and primary politics. We will all live to screw up another day, though our performance in New Hampshire will be hard to beat.”
Brokaw’s suggestion is easier said than done, obviously; after all, Chris Matthews needs a job. But the grizzled anchorman does raise a good point, I think. After New Hampshire, I know that in the future, I’m going to be more skeptical about polling when trying to come to my own conclusions about the direction in which a race is headed.
Here’s an interesting piece from Slate, by the way, about the (provocative) idea of ridding the election of polls altogether –
http://www.slate.com/id/2181838/
4 Janet Wu // Jan 12, 2008 at 8:55 am
You still have it wrong. The fourth estate exists not merely to give Chris Matthews a job. Brokaw and Williams can pontificate all they want but the fact remains: NBC, CBS, ABC, CNN, the NY Times etc. will never give up polling as long as candidates hire their own pollsters. This is how they determine strategy for their campaigns. And as long as they are polling, it is the responsibility of news organizations to report the motivations of each candidate as well as provide independent numbers (ie hire their own pollsters) to verify or rebut the numbers that are often colored when candidates shared them with the press.
I agree commentators who pronounce the election “over” before voters go to the polls are insane. They have their reputations to consider when they draw these ridiculous conclusions before the results are in. But responsible journalists who cover the campaigns daily hopefully do not indulge in this fantasy and should always remain skeptical when reporting numbers. After all, it is only a snapshot of the race at one particular moment and the number of undecideds and uncertain voters are always included in these polls for reporters to review. The ones who take the headlines and run should consider another line of work.
That being said, this is what makes politics, covering politics and living in a democracy so delicious. And as the voters in New Hampshire told us: responsible, active citizens vote their hearts, their minds and their conscience - not what Bill O’Reilly, Chris Matthews or any other commentator tells them.
Leave a Comment