Are We Living in a Post-Truth World, Part 4: We Know Polling Isn't an Exact Science. So Why Is It Treated by So Many as More Reliable Then Gospel?

  

Over the years whenever you read an article online from a publication, whether it from a right or left-wing media, a political organization, the mainstream media and even some political comedians, you often here a certain phrasing. This has to do with so many of the hot button issues of today’s society: gun control, universal health care, income inequality, legalization of certain drugs, and of course abortion and the death penalty.

So often when these arguments are phrased by so many they come with the same subhead: “A vast majority of Americans believe that…”  Particularly when it comes to so many of the progressive or Democratic platform ideas, it’s argued the same way. “An overwhelming number of Americans, a vast majority of Americans, most Americans,” pick your phrasing.

The intelligent person – who as we all know these narratives are argued for – knows that there is a critical word missing from that phrase after Americans. That word is ‘polled’. Most of us do understand the difference  - no organization has to power to interview every single person in America. The problem is a sin of omission is still a sin. We know all too well that polling has always been an inexact science and we also know that phrasing can make a difference in any number of issues. But somehow not only the left, but the media and so many other supposedly smart people, have decided that polling on so many issues should essentially be carved in stone and considered policy when it comes for every single legislator, state and national, to consider their agenda.

The left, in particular, loves to lean this argument when they argue that Republicans and conservatives with their agenda and policy are going against the will of the people. They will point to any poll that they can fight (even Fox News if it suits their purpose) to demonstrate yet again that they are correct and the Republicans are wrong.

But just as the devil can quote Scripture if its serves his purpose, anybody can quote polling to serve theirs.  The left loves to leans on the idea of polling as fact, when in fact it is nothing more than statistics. The media argues that it is de facto the voice of the people when the average poll is somewhere between 1000 and 1500 surveyed. And remember that number is based on the ones who responded to the poll. We never know how many people might have other opinions but who just don’t have the time and energy to waste on a phone call. And that, of course, is all the many ways a survey can be weighted to make it say what the pollster or the person polling wants the message to be.

Once again the most accurate source to deal with how we regard polling is The West Wing. Aaron Sorkin knew how important polls were to politics; one of the most beloved recurring characters during the show’s tenure was Joey Lucas, played by Marlee Matlin. The Bartlet Administration and Josh Lyman in particular trusted her intellect and ability immensely. But even she admitted once to Josh that she ‘didn’t know what those numbers said.’

And the administration itself knew just how ridiculous the numbers could be. In the aftermath of the attempt on Bartlet’s life in Season 2, the staff was marveling over Bartlet’s 81 percent approval rating. They acknowledge they’re soft. CJ tells the staff: “A week ago, the job approval’s 51. We get shot at it and it’s 81.” Sam follows up with:

“When asked ‘whose approach on important national problems do you think generally best, President Bartlet or the Republican leaders of Congress,’ Bartlet’s gets 61 %

Bartlet responds. “Well 19 percent of the country has clearly made up their minds about me; 20 percent just feel sorry for me.”

In an episode in Season 4, Josh is appalled to know that they have lost the vote of a Senator on foreign aid because of a poll in the New York Times that says that ‘68 percent of Americans think we spend too much on foreign aid, and 59 percent say that amount should be cut.” Josh takes this in and repeats over and over throughout the episode. At one point he’s told he really loves that figure and is asked why. Josh explodes:

“Because nine percent of Americans think we spend too much and it shouldn’t be cut! Nine percent of Americans polled could not wrap their heads around the question!”

I have always loved that particular line more and more as the years go by. Because if that line doesn’t prove that so much of what politicians, the media and lobbyists consider gospel is based on the basic inability of phrasing, I don’t know what will.

This brings me to the larger point of this ‘post-truth America’ when it says that so much of the country is entitled to their own truth but not their own facts. The problem comes that so much of what the media and the political industrial system consider facts are really statistics and most of those statistics come from surveys done by specific organizations of a sampling of Americans.

Now I need to be clear I do believe in the accuracy of polling at other levels: congressional and Senatorial races, Presidential primary polling and election polling. I don’t believe it’s anywhere near perfect and I know that, if anything, it can be weighted even more based on whose doing the polling, but over the last decade I’ve found it mostly accurate.

The problem I have comes when so many people – and this is mostly a Democratic and progressive issue – want to create a national legislative agenda based on polling. This is the rule rather than the exception on every swing issue as long as I’ve been following it and if you can’t find the flaw in trying to argue the popularity for an issue of national importance based on a polling of a few thousand people (at most) then you’ve basically deciding to ignore the importance of math.

Not the least of these problems has been how both sides then to view something as a winning issue. In recent years Democrats in particular love to glam on to the idea that so much of their policy, from raising the minimum wage to gun control to education, is favored by a ‘majority of Americans’. And they’re not lying in many cases: the polling often fits the dictionary definition of a majority, which is 51 percent. 51 percent, last I checked, is a failing grade everywhere but politics and even in this limited construct, it barely counts as the teeming masses.

Speaking for myself, I have always considered a safer number to be something like 75 to 80 percent. I might be willing to go as low as 60-65 percent because that’s a landslide in today’s politics. But if you’re going to tell me that ‘a vast majority of Americans favor affirmative action’ and you list as evidence  a poll that says 54 percent do, I am going to want to know more before I say that you have the will of the people.

Then there’s the problem of trying to argue that so many surveys taken are in favor of this. Now I’d be more willing to take this seriously if rather than one giant conglomerate poll – and as we know, the larger the sample size, the more inaccurate these polls can be come – then, I don’t know, a poll for all 50 states. I am all too aware these states are not all the same size so perhaps we should try to get a proportionate number for each one. The only way we can truly know how the nation feels on any major issue is taking a sampling from every state. I imagine that people in Idaho and Utah are going to feel very different about gay marriage and abortion then people in California and New Jersey. I also know that in blue states and red states, you will not get 100 percent agreement on anything and the important part is to figure out where the nuances are in state-to-state.

But who am I kidding? The left wouldn’t set foot in any of these states other than to mock them as backwards and undeserving. I’ve read so many articles in so many sources – not all of them political – mocking and berating every single aspect of a state in the South, the Midwest, the West, basically everywhere that isn’t either on the coasts or a swing state as backwards, full of white trash and MAGA extremists, all of whom deserve to suffer the horrible lives they have because they are dumb enough to either vote for Republicans or not live in a blue state. I have no doubt that there are African-Americans, women, LGBTQ+ and maybe even Democrats in all of these states but as far as the left goes they don’t count because they live in the 2500 sections of the country that Trump won where (according to Salon) ‘nobody lives’ rather than the 500 sections that Biden won where ‘everybody lives’. I can’t imagine any progressive organization worth a damn has even tried to do phone calls polling in Wyoming or Arkansas, much less tried to run a voting drive there.

The only breakdowns in polling that the left cares about is, of course, political affiliation. And there they only really care about what Democrats think. The Republicans are lost to them and the independents are untrustworthy because they haven’t fully committed to the leftist cause. It’s nice if some of them agree with the views they have, but they don’t really care one way or the other; they’re certainly not going to make an effort to win them over in the next election.

The media thinks that polling by party affiliation is the best way to get a national perspective. It’s the worst because it plays in to just how statistics work. There’s an old joke about statisticians doing archery practice that you probably all know but here it is anyway:

“Three statisticians are practicing archery. The first, after much work, shoots his arrow ten feet to the left of the target.

The second, after similar calculation, shoots his arrow ten feet to the right of the target.

The third starts jumping up and down: “Bullseye!”

That’s what weighted statistics are, and its especially true when it comes to politics and the kind of people you survey. Say Anderson Cooper went on CNN and said a recent poll said that 53 percent of all Americans believe that we show forego any trial of Donald Trump and we should just burn him at the stake in front of a nationally televised audience while the Biden family sings campfire songs in front of it. Cooper could then say that this is a point of view held by a bipartisan coalition of Americans – 98 percent of all Democrats favor it as well as 8 percent of all Republicans. It averages out that way, but it’s not a true perspective of the landscape and anybody who tried to use that survey as part of their argument would be a fool – though I could see some people trying.

This is an extreme example I grant you but it is still of the same kind of model that is being used by pollsters across the country, echoed by the media and reported by late-night comics to argue an agenda as fact.

Like everything else in the world a poll is meaningless without context. And context is one of those things that is harder to find. USA Today can preach that a vast majority of Americans believe in some form of gun control. What they mean is usually that, out of 1000 to 1100 people surveyed 55-60 percent believe this. They might be able to give certain details on the question of their political affiliation but that’s meaningless without knowing anything else.

But because a certain part of our society believes in numbers and facts as a unassailable argument, they will spent this election cycle and every one after it certain that it is their truth. They will hold it up to argue just how foolish governors of Idaho and South Dakota are about their values when their not the same as ones who lead Vermont or Maine. They’ll argue that the Senators from Tennessee and Utah are standing in the way of progress when they are doing what the people who elected them to do asked for – but I guarantee you few people bothered to survey them to find out their opinion. And they’ll argue over and over that ‘the people are with them’ on everything because 50-55 percent say they are and whatever’s left is the section of ‘deplorables’ they wouldn’t give the time of day too. They claim that the numbers are with them, even though they have even less of an idea ‘what the numbers actually me