The value of opinion polls has been questioned by a long line of spectacular failures to predict public sentiment before elections. How could polls be improved for accuracy? Voters cheat pollsters, right? The surprise of Hillary Clinton’s win in the 2016 elections was unlike any other poll-based election projection in recent memory.
A sizable majority of Britons were expected to choose to remain in the EU, according to YouGov and Ipsos/Mori polls. 52% of voters chose to go, while 48% chose to stay in the Brexit referendum, which really had the exact opposite outcome. Due to such failures, scientists are now looking for more effective ways to gauge the mood of electorates.
For months, pollsters and political analysts in Brazil predicted that Jair Bolsonaro, the country’s right-wing president, was so far behind in the public’s opinion that Luis Inacio Lula da Silva, his left-wing rival, would win the first round of voting on October 2 and take home more than 50% of the vote. He didn’t, necessitating the holding of a second round on October 30. Before the next election, prominent Americas Quarterly editor-in-chief Brian Winter announced he would stop disclosing poll results.
Most polls are based on interviews with 1,000 to 1,500 people. How to select samples that are representatives of the electorate as a whole is a very difficult problem. The next big test for pollsters and forecasters in the United States face will be the November midterm elections. As response rates decline, it gets harder and harder to make the electorate representative, experts say.
Between 1934 and 2018, there were 22 midterm elections, and on average, the party of the president in office lost 28 seats in the House and 4 seats in the Senate. Because they are aware that the results would be heavily influenced by the centre, analysts have been very circumspect in their projections for the Senate. When pollsters make a mistake, they may refer to a long history.
Take the 1948 US presidential election as an example. A now-famous image of Harry Truman holding up the first page of the Chicago Tribune with the headline ‘Dewey Defeats Truman’ on it depicts the unexpected result. The editors of the newspaper decided not to wait for the official outcome since many surveys and experts were so confident that Thomas Dewey, the Republican nominee, would win.
Post Your Comments