Ahh, the problems with polling. As Hood explained, it’s more an art than a science. We’ve seen Obama plunge and McCrory gain. There are polls on the tea party and on magistrates’ performing same sex marriages. And now the king of polls, Nate Silver says polls may be failing us. Maybe we’re all just pooped of all the polls as Damon Linker in this Week report opines:
The human mind is limited in its capacity to memorize, organize, sort, and access information, and in the ability to analyze it dispassionately. That’s why for all of human history until the invention of the computer, people (including public figures and business owners) made judgments about the world by eyeballing, guesstimating, and generalizing on the basis of sometimes dubious inferences rooted in inevitably partial individual experiences, memories, and subjective impressions, with all of the distortions that go along with them.
Computers, with their vastly superior memory and capacity to analyze vast quantities of information, give us insights that would be otherwise off-limits. That has very positive consequences for social-scientific research, which can now propose and test hypotheses about the shape and contours of The Aggregate — meaning society (or segments of society) viewed as a whole.
But the computer-facilitated compilation and crunching of data also presents an enormous temptation to public figures and businesses, both of which desperately want every added edge they can get their hands on.
In what might be called the classical model of retail democratic politics, the politician goes out on the campaign trail and stakes out positions based on a mixture of what he thinks the people want to hear and what he thinks is best for the country; if the message resonates with voters, they will turn out for him on Election Day. The same holds for a business-owner or entrepreneur: she offers a product or service, and success is determined by sales and whether customers show their satisfaction by returning for more and spreading good word of mouth.
Surveys go much further — into the minds of voters and customers. Knowledge is power, and survey data and analysis grant politicians and those who own and run businesses the power of knowing precisely what the people want, sometimes even before they’re fully aware of it themselves.
What’s wrong with that? Viewed one politician or business at a time, nothing much. The problem arises when thousands of public figures and marketing departments launch their own surveys to gain competitive advantages. The result is an over-saturated public-opinion marketplace in which citizens and customers alike begin to feel a mixture of fatigue and irritation that dilutes the accuracy of the polls, leading their trustworthiness to get called into question.
What do you think? Too many polls? Comment if you agree, email me if you disagree, meet me for a drink if you’re just tired of all the polls.
