Is This the End of Polling?

Pollsters everywhere keep getting it wrong.

President Donald J. Trump and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson continue to talk at the conclusion of their working breakfast meeting Sunday, Aug. 25, 2019, at Hotel du Palais Biarritz in Biarritz, France, site of the G7 Summit. (Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead)

As the British Labour Party continues to lick its wounds and begins to slowly recover after the sound political thrashing dealt them by Boris Johnson and his Tories, some progressive liberal party activists are defending themselves by reminding the public that Labour’s ideas poll very well.

Yeah, so?

A great many ideas may poll well, but you can also get almost any idea to be said to “poll well” if the perspective and wording are tweaked by a clever enough marketer.

That’s right; marketer. The organizations that conduct most public polling, and the pollsters who design and administer polls, enjoy a veneer of scientific respectability they hardly deserve.

Most pollsters are less bespectacled actuarial wonk and more slick snake-oil salesman meets underground bookie. An organization hires a pollster to sort of reverse-engineer sell an ad concept. As in, “I need this poll to agree with me and/or show I’m right. And, go.”

Political organizations in need of polling data, for instance, do not require that data to determine the correct course of political action. On the contrary; the correct course of action has already been decided and a poll is needed to justify it and increase public support.