As I demonstrated in yesterday’s article, How Bloomberg Spun its Own Poll Data to Make Hillary Clinton Seem Inevitable, the media is intentionally spinning poll results at best, and completely fabricating them at worst.
While that’s bad enough, there are also some deep, fundamental problems which plague any attempts to conduct accurate polling in 2016. Cliff Zukin, professor of public policy and political science at Rutgers University and a past president of the American Association for Public Opinion Research, wrote about many of these issues in a 2015 New York Times opinion piece titled, What’s the Matter With Polling?
Here are a few excerpts:
Over the past two years, election polling has had some spectacular disasters. Several organizations tracking the 2014 midterm elections did not catch the Republican wave that led to strong majorities in both houses; polls in Israel badly underestimated Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s strength, and pollsters in Britain predicted a close election only to see the Conservatives win easily. What’s going on here? How much can we trust the polls as we head toward the 2016 elections?
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