Our Emotional Response to the Revelation to a Poll... or an Election

How many times have I discussed polling and the flaws inherent in them? Every poll you read ALWAYS has a margin of error included, because, in the end, it isn’t entirely accurate. And the pollster gives himself or herself an out. Including some wishful thinking.

 

Even I incorporated some wishful thinking in my commentary, Rolling On To a Win, from November 1. After having read other polls, and other sources, I predicted that Donald Trump would win 375 Electoral Votes and 58% of the popular vote.

Well, I was wrong. And yet, I was right, too. By the time the results are finalized, he will have won 312 Electoral votes and only 52% of the popular vote. Oops. My bad for applying some wishful thinking.

But I was correct in this: the professional pollsters had him losing, or barely squeezing by with a miniscule win. In the end, he had a comfortable winning margin of victory.

Newsmax reported in Wedesday's late online edition that the pollsters' performances was under the microscope this year, after two big misses in succession: they failed to anticipate Trump's victory in 2016 and overestimated the margin by which Biden won against him in 2020.

"Trump was underestimated by about 2 points this time around" in key states, said Pedro Azevedo, head of U.S. polling at AtlasIntel.

In the era of Trump, many people, for whatever their reasons, are hesitant to answer a pollster's questions honestly. Or offer “No Opinion” as the answer to a pollster.

And then, of course, in the old days, prior to cell phones, a pollster would be calling someone in a region tied to an area code. Now, those area codes, which would be indicative to a specific populace the pollster was trying to reach, are less trustworthy, since the called person may have moved elsewhere in the country, keeping the number.

Also, since unknown callers are usually considered spam calls by the recipient, he isn’t picked up, making the analytics even more difficult to ascertain. This makes for less reliable guesses made by the pollster on the data he was able to review.

So, ultimately, the belief that the only poll that matters really IS the one taken on Election Day. Which I have said time and again for years, most recently in my commentary this past Sunday, The Most Controversial, Contentious, Compelling and Consequential Election.

It behooves us to take a lesson from this election. We cannot allow our emotions to take the place of our sober analysis of the facts. It ends up distorting our perception of reality.

And then, we get angry or annoyed, disappointed or ecstatic, whether with ourselves or with the messenger, when the truth is finally revealed.