Most Americans view election surveys with both anticipation and skepticism.The sheer number and the potential for defective or biased polling make poll watching a challenging and time-consuming endeavor.
If only there were a place we could go and see all the polls and an unbiased average indicating trends.Turns out there is.I visit RealClearPolitics every morning to find articles on both sides of the pertinent issues of the day.When the website began publishing and updating a thorough list of election surveys — and their unweighted average — I considered it the answer to a political junkie’s prayers.
I clearly wasn’t alone: RCP’s polling averages became widely accepted across the media landscape.But there was a problem.Establishment polling elites objected to RCP’s unfiltered results.Consider this New York Times piece published five days before the presidential election: “Why the Right Thinks Trump Is Running Away With the Race.” The right thought that, of course, because he was.
But despite the political winds, the Times staff were unable to fathom that possibility.Donald Trump cruising to victory, the paper said, was a misperception: “Skewed polls and anonymous betting markets are building up Republicans’ expectations.” The Times saw this as something of a conspiracy designed to create “a narrative of unstoppable momentum” for Trump “that could undermine faith in the entire [electoral] system.”To save our democracy — and perhaps encourage its progressive readership — the Times asserted skewed polls weren’t “having a significant impact on the polling averages calculated by news organizations, including the New York Times,” because they “do not treat all polls equally.” Rather, in their great wisdom, legacy news organizations “adjust their models to give less weight” to surveys they decide are biased — or simply ignore them.The Times seriously thought people would see this as a plus.The paper then criticized RCP b...