Just dropped · Trial Balloon · Ep. 192
November Surprises
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President Trump blasted Fox News over their latest poll showing the majority of Americans now showing support for impeaching and removing him from office.
Said Trump: “From the day I announced I was running for President, I have NEVER had a good Fox News Poll. Whoever their pollster is, they suck.”
He added: “But Fox News is also much different than it used to be in the good old days… Fox News doesn’t deliver for US anymore. It is so different than it used to be. Oh well, I’m President!”
Mark Blumenthal: “The impeachment story is blowing up. It’s a high-stakes moment — for President Trump, for Democrats and for pollsters. It’s also a scary moment for polling.”
“Yes, people who follow politics are now intensely interested in whether the latest developments might shift public opinion about Trump and impeachment. But when news is exceptionally big, a growing body of evidence suggests it can throw off the accuracy of polling itself.”
The Economist: “In its latest software release, Apple has made it possible for iPhone users to send all unknown callers to voicemail automatically. Although the feature will no doubt prove useful to the millions of customers whose peaceful suppers are ruined by fake calls, it could be disastrous for the faltering public-polling industry.”
“The challenges telephone pollsters face have been growing. Polling by phone has become very expensive, as the number of Americans willing to respond to unexpected or unknown callers has dropped. Back in the mid-to-late-20th century response rates were as high as 70%, according to SSRS, a market research and polling firm. But the Pew Research Centre estimates that it received completed interviews from a mere 6% of the people it tried to survey in 2018.”
Matthew Yglesias: “Democratic voters are stuck in a self-destructive loop.”
“The loop begins and ends with polls. Pollsters know that Democrats want to know who is the strongest candidate against President Donald Trump, so they conduct a lot of head-to-head polls matching Trump up against various contenders. The polls show that the best-known Democrats — former Vice President Joe Biden, Sen. Bernie Sanders, and Sen. Elizabeth Warren — are the strongest candidates against him, which likely boosts them in the polls. This makes it hard for the lesser-known candidates to get attention, which further ensures they’ll do poorly in the head-to-head polls against Trump.”
“The problem is that head-to-head polls at this stage in the race overwhelmingly reflect the challenger’s name recognition rather than anything that would help you predict an election outcome that’s more than a year in the future.”
Aaron Blake: “The divergence in Iowa polls highlights a challenge for observers early in the 2020 election: While we have an abundance of national polls, early-state polls have been few and far between, and that makes it incredibly difficult to draw conclusions about whose organization and message are appealing to the voters who matter most. It’s not clear yet whether we have a true and accurate picture of the race, even as it stands now.”
“The pace of early 2020 polls is significantly slower in Iowa and in New Hampshire than it was four years ago. The poll Wednesday was just the second live-caller poll released in Iowa since the beginning of August, compared with six over the same period in 2015. In New Hampshire, there have been just two over the same span in 2019, compared with four in 2015.”
“If you expand the universe to all quality polls and stretch it further back in the race, the pattern holds. There have been just seven quality polls, including automated and online surveys, in Iowa since the start of May, compared with 14 over the same period in 2015.”
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Monmouth pollster Patrick Murray acknowledged that a poll released this week showing Joe Biden’s support dropping by 13 percent was an “outlier.”
Murray said the result was the “product of the uncertainty that is inherent in the polling process” which “occurs very infrequently.”
He added: “In the end, we must put out the numbers we have. They should always be viewed in the context of what other polls are saying, not only as it applies to the horse race, but also for our understanding of the issues that motivate voters in their decision-making process.”
David Byler: “But we’re not completely in the dark about who is going to be the Democratic nominee. National primary polls taken at this point in the process don’t have a great track record of picking the eventual winner. But one of the candidates in the top three or four in the national polls often does become the nominee. And while true polling longshots — those polling at zero percent or close to it — do still have some chance of winning, the historical record doesn’t provide much reason for optimism.”
Nate Cohn: “The transition away from live interview telephone polling is well underway, and online polls now make up the principal source of data on national public opinion.”
“But the alternatives to traditional polling are not fully mature, and the absence of a clear set of standards for online polling research has opened the floodgates to unproven surveys of uncertain quality.”
“Many of the new pollsters have become familiar enough that journalists and readers have started to cite them with confidence. It’s not yet clear they all deserve it.”
Perry Bacon: “In the runup to the 2016 presidential election, this same question came up, and FiveThirtyEight analyzed general election polls from 1944 to 2012 that tested the eventual nominees and were conducted in the last two months of the year before the election (so for 2012, that would be November and December of 2011). On average, these polls missed the final result by 11 percentage points.”
“The last presidential election featured one of the more accurate sets of early polls for this point in the cycle: Hillary Clinton led Donald Trump 46.2 percent to 41.2 percent in an average of all polls conducted in November and December 2015, missing the eventual national popular vote margin by about 3 points. (The actual result was Clinton 48.0 percent, Trump 46.0 percent.)”
Nathaniel Rakich: “There are already a lot of things that a smart poll-watcher has to account for when comparing surveys. Were they done by the same pollster? Did they query the same type of population (likely voters, registered voters, all adults)? To this list, the volatile 2020 Democratic primary field has added one more: Do they ask about the same candidates?”
“With upwards of 20 candidates and potential candidates, pollsters are forced to make editorial decisions about whom to ask about. And with new candidates still popping up out of nowhere, the field is enough in flux that it looks different every month.”
An analysis of polling in party nominations between 1980 and 2016 by The Economist finds this early in a cycle just 17% of polls released have correctly identified the eventual party nominee.
Politico: “The logjam of nearly two dozen declared or likely Democratic presidential candidates is overwhelming public pollsters trying to measure the 2020 primary. New surveys are cramming up to 23 Democrats into their questionnaires after the [DNC] set a low, 1 percent polling threshold to gain admittance into the party’s first primary debates.”
“The miles-long list of candidates has created an unusual set of methodological challenges for pollsters already battling declining engagement with their surveys. But pollsters say the criteria also put them in a no-win situation: A pollster’s decision about whether to include a candidate or not could be a make-or-break choice for that campaign, especially the lesser-known and first-time White House hopefuls hoping to make the debate stage.”
Politico: “The percentage of Americans willing to participate in telephone polls has hit a new low, according to a new report, raising doubts about the continued viability of the phone surveys that have traditionally dominated politics and elections, both in the media and in campaigns.”
“The Pew Research Center reported Wednesday that the response rate for its phone polls last year fell to just 6 percent — meaning pollsters could only complete interviews with 6 percent of the households in their samples. It continues the long-term decline in response rates, which had leveled off earlier this decade.”
“Gallup, the country’s best-known polling firm, is once again scaling back on the political surveys that have made it so famous,” Politico reports.
“Only a year after Gallup switched its presidential tracking poll — the ever-present reading of the president’s approval rating — from daily to weekly, the company will announce Friday that it plans to measure President Donald Trump’s job-approval rating only on a monthly basis.”
“Warning: exit polls are like online dating profiles. Things may not be as they appear. And they may break your heart.”
— 2016 Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook, on Twitter.
Taegan Goddard
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire -- which for more than two decades has been one of the nation's most influential political news sites.
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