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CONLEY COMMENTARY (WSAU) – Reflect for a moment how often you heard news stories abot polls during last month’s election cycle.
This radio station regularly reported on the Marquette Law School poll – which month after month reported Kamala Harris leading Donald Trump. Wrong. The same poll also reported Senator Tammy Baldwin leading Eric Hovde in our state’s senate race, first by large numbers, and then by much smaller margins. Wrong. Baldwin snuck by with a razor-thin 29,000 vote win.
Fox News and the other networks trumped their own polling, and the polling of other groups, showing that the seven battleground states were all toss ups. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Kamala Harris did not win a single battleground state. There was even a pollster that showed Harris leading in Iowa by 6-point in the week before election day. She lost Iowa by 7-points, and that pollster is now on sabbatical.
Now comes a report from David Plouffe, one of the Harris campaign’s top advisors. He reveled in his podcast last week that Harris’ internal polls never showed her leading in the national race. Never. She was always behind, and the leaders of her campaign knew it.
That raises an interesting question. How do private pollsters get it right, but every national poll gets it wrong? New York Times-Siena, Quinnipiac, Gallop, Washington Post, Wall Strett Journal? Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.
Now maybe polling is inaccurate because of Donald Trump – that Trump supporters don’t answer pollsters honestly. So, maybe polls will be a useful tool again when Trump is no longer on the ballot.
I’m not so sure. What I am certain of is that I’m embarrassed that we, the media, have wasted so much air time and web space on news stories that are flat-out incorrect. For the next election cycle maybe we should invite Marion The Soothsayer and her crystal ball to tell us who’s ahead. She couldn’t do any worse.
Chris Conley
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