Campaign Polls Deserve Substantial Coverage

By: Frank Newport In his current article in Editor & Publisher, "On the Can-Pain Trail", Senior Editor Joe Strupp states that polls "... offer little real news, especially months before the election. " This is substantially incorrect. Polls in the months before an election, on the contrary, offer important and vital news. Editors should focus on providing more and better news coverage of polls, rather than less. And that includes "horse race" polls.

Most major national and statewide election campaigns are based on polling intelligence paid for and used by the candidates. This information is not made available to journalists. Without independent polls to provide average citizens with this same base of information, readers are left clueless as to what is happening in a campaign.

More generally, candidates make an extraordinary effort to change voters' minds during the course of a campaign. It is certainly "real" news when newspapers use the best scientific tools available to monitor how those efforts are progressing. These tools are polls.

Journalists have no qualms about interviewing campaign functionaries, expert observers, and people on the street to provide readers with insights into the progress of the campaign. Polls provide insights based on a scientific representation, not a haphazard selection of a few individuals whose phone numbers are available to reporters.

Indeed, Strupp's statement that "After giving too much attention to polls, newspapers often ignore the voters themselves," makes little sense. Polls are the voters. In larger county, state and national races, in fact, polls provide the only reliable way of staying in touch with voters.

Strupp alludes to editors lamenting the "horse race" syndrome. Why the lamentations? Reporting pre-election horse-race polls does not trivialize an election, but elevates it. These polls should be an integral part of campaign reporting -- bringing science, objectivity and precision into the journalistic process.

It's important to remember that the purpose of an election is to find the best possible candidate who will do the best possible job of representing voters' interests. Campaigns are not supposed to be gigantic guessing games in which voters are clueless about what is going on until Election Day. The most positive outcomes from the citizens come about when the people have full knowledge of how the election process is going and what the potential outcome is shaping up to be.

Were California voters worse off last year when polls showed that the Gray Davis recall was likely to pass and that Arnold Schwarzenegger was the leading candidate to replace him? I think not. Horse race polls gave California voters the opportunity to contemplate the implications of what was happening and to make an informed decision on whether or not they should change their minds to stop it. The interests of the state of California were well served by polls that allowed voters to contemplate -- ahead of time -- the implications of what was likely to occur on Election Day.

Horse race polling helps voters understand how their friends and neighbors are reacting to candidates. This is a good thing. Taking into account the collective views of others is a solidly rational basis for making a decision -- certainly as valuable as highly-produced 30-second television commercials.

Strupp says: "Polls give daily papers an easy, formulaic, exclusive chunk of information that most voters will likely read." The reason most voters will likely read about polls is because they are interested in them. Elections are exciting and fascinating in and of themselves. Many newspaper readers want to be able to follow them just as much as the political professionals do. Providing polls helps readers reach this goal.

Voters are more intelligent than many elitist editors give them credit for. Voters can handle poll information. Provide the information and let voters deal with it as they want to.

Indeed, I believe all of this hand-wringing about paying too much attention to polls is misplaced. Instead, newspapers editors and reporters should focus on why they don't spend enough time carefully assessing and vetting polls, reporting on their quality and meaning with as much effort as they put into other areas of news coverage.

The bottom line this election season: Editors need to focus on providing better coverage of good, scientific polls. The object should not be to ignore or downplay polls but to do a better job of reporting them.

(E&P subscribers may read Strupp's article here.)