Political polls are struggling

By Joel Snell

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The Literary Digest predicts the Republican will win the election in a landslide. The sample is in the tens of thousands. That means that will crush the Democratic candidate. Really? Yes, really! That is what the magazine predicted in 1936. The Literary Digest died shortly thereafter.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt beat Alfred Landon in every state that year but Maine and New Hampshire. The problem for the magazine was that its sample was not random (every “likely voter” has an equal chance of being chosen). So if you have lots of voters and yet they are not random, you can still be really wrong.

Polling got much better when almost everyone had a rotary dial phone. The polls became more accurate until folks started getting cellphones and other technology with bells and whistles and replaced their land lines. Now polls are struggling.

In the 2008 election, four polls were right on the button. Five were off. No one said John McCain was going to win, and the final vote was Obama 52 percent, McCain 46 percent. However, the two that were most wrong are very prestigious polls: Gallup 55 percent to 44 percent and Zogby 54 percent to 43 percent.

Political polling on an everyday basis appears to be best represented by realclearpolitics.com. This site brings together numerous polls and you can see the differences. How accurate are they? Please read on.

As the pollsters have become wobbly, two other forecasters have come to the rescue. One is Intrade.com. You purchase political shares on who you think will win even if you want the other person to win. It is an engaging process and something you can participate in with a great deal of pleasure as long as your purchases are not too large. In the last election, they were dead right on the electoral college, which is what they predict.

Then came Nate Silver (538blog.nytimes.com). He is absolutely accurate. So what does he do? I don't know. It is a trade proprietary secret. At any rate, he was so good that the New York Times hired him. Overall, he indicates that the race should be close and that 2 points should be added to Mitt Romney thanks to many state legislatures that want to stop voter fraud, and the Supreme Court ruling that corporations are people and therefore there is endless money for these entities to spend money, mainly on Romney. So if reality remains as it appears, Romney is our guy.

As this is being written, Obama is still ahead. Further, so many things can happen to throw the election either way. That is my nice way of saying the president still has a very good chance. Really.

Joel Snell of Cedar Rapids is professor emeritus of social science at Kirkwood Community College. Comments: snelljennifer47@hotmail.com