As a result, most reporters did not anticipate the extent of the 49-state landslide in which Nixon racked up 61 percent of the vote. Liberal columnist Mary McGrory, who was always an indefatigable reporter, was gulled by a leaked late October McGovern canvass sheet showing the South Dakota senator supposedly fending off Nixon in the blue-collar Detroit suburb of Hamtramck. New York Times reporter Adam Clymer theorized from his own door-knocking in Ohio that voters were embarrassed to admit they were secretly backing McGovern. Smart reporters on the McGovern plane thought that Nixon might win by 5 percentage points, and not, as it turned out, by 23 points.
This is what happens when—devoid of reliable polling—political reporting is governed by instinct, hunch and whispered campaign plane conversations. Maybe there is romance in resisting the gimlet-eyed clarity of regression analyses of the state surveys. But given a choice of a campaign shaped by polls or one in which reporters try to divine the sentiments of the voters through the size and enthusiasm of crowds, please sign me for Politics 2012.
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Less would be a good thing... lessen the deluge of over-informed and repetitive comments from media and other sources.
Now, they need to work on less PAC ad's.
#1 Posted by Tom, CJR on Wed 28 Nov 2012 at 02:12 PM
One crucial point is often neglected in this assessment. The vast majority of firms conducting publicly released opinion surveys do so as loss leaders. Their primary objective is to increase brand recognition and reputation while competing for private commercial research projects (advertising awareness and effectiveness, product design and demand, analysis of market segments, etc.). Nothing wrong with that, but it needs to be understood. I've worked in the best known polling outfit for a quarter of a century, and witnessed this firsthand.
This has always been the case -- in fact, I doubt that the polling "industry" as such has failed to realize a net profit in its 75 years of existence. Without this function, it's highly likely that the only entities conducting public released surveys would be academic insitutions, non profit organizations, and advocacy groups.
In a market economy, though, the commercial utility of this function won't disappear, and neither will publicly released opinion polls. In fact, pollsters batle to achieve the highest possible visibiity for thir work.
#2 Posted by richard, CJR on Wed 28 Nov 2012 at 07:42 PM
(EDIT: should read "I doubt that the polling industry as such has realized a net profit in its 75 years of existence (as regards this component of its business operations)."
#3 Posted by richard, CJR on Wed 28 Nov 2012 at 07:49 PM