The Witness Chronicles, 10/17/24
Election polling (not) decoded
The Clickbait Election Headline
‘Trump vs Harris: Who is ahead in the polls?’
If you’ve read the news lately, you’ve seen a variation on the above headline. If you’re me, you’ve seen it every day, multiple times a day, from multiple media sources. Ad nauseam.
This is the peak of lazy election journalism. And editorial cynicism. Why? For one, it’s pure clickbait designed, poorly, to get us to open a page and serve up more ads on that page. And it works because in an election this close, many of us are just hoping we will read something we want to see, a breakout for example.
Polling is an inexact science, which is an excessively polite way to put it. Frankly there is no science involved at all, no matter what the polling companies and institutions claim. With the advent of mobile phones and the death of landlines, polling became far more problematic and inaccurate. Add in the numerous scams out there and most of us simply don’t answer calls that are not identified.
On top of all that, with this country so bitterly divided and one side openly threatening voters they disagree with, who in their right mind is going to tell a stranger on the phone or via email, what their voting plans are?
Polling is big business, especially in a tight presidential race that no one is ready to call, though calling the election is another good way to get some media time. You know, those other lead lines, like ‘Man Who Correctly Called Last Nine Elections Makes Prediction’
So, a guy got lucky, sort of, and now he has achieved pundit status. He gets to go on talk shows and news panels to tell us the secret logic he employs to be right every time. Maybe there’s a book deal in it.
I watch a lot of pundits, mostly on the PBS NewsHour, which is widely considered to have a liberal bias because they actually tell the truth and bring in people from both sides of issues. The three major networks, NBC, CBS, and ABC, do a pretty decent job. Fox, the most watched network, I do not consider a legitimate news network because they were forced to admit they intentionally lied and paid an $880 million fine because of it. With more losses to come.
Cable networks all have their own in-house pundits and their own varying degrees of integrity, widely varying degrees of integrity, so the news consumer, if we want some kind of truth, even when it is not what we want to hear, has to look at different sources. And compare them to find the places where they agree.
Confused yet? When I was growing up there were the three main networks. PBS gradually gained status and then we got CNN and Fox, and now we have a bunch of outliers and new contenders like NewsNation. I don’t have cable so I can only catch cable news content from places like YouTube, in bits and pieces.
I make no claim to be a normal news consumer, in fact I am extremely abby normal, thanks to Marty Feldman. Because I write about politics, I read far too much news, which is why those lazy headlines and polling and punditry irritates me.
And that irritation and mistrust may be why we have what are now called ‘low information voters’, a phrase that entered the language sometime in the last year, about those people who have checked out on the whole thing. I don’t use the phrase much because it can be taken as demeaning. I can completely understand why someone would choose to be a low information voter.
The problem is that these people are susceptible and often get their news from one source, like Fox, or their buddies or co-workers, not exactly reliable sources. And if they are wise, they have learned not to reveal what they actually feel about politics these days, which contributes to those polling headlines.
There will be a quiz.
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Spot on, Martin (and thanks for the “abby normal” bit, sadly few people will understand that these days). I’ve known that our “main stream” media outlets have been useless for a long time, but your point about click-bait explains it perfectly. Graduating college in the mid-80’s with an engineering degree in digital communications, I’d thought at the time that instantaneous global communications would foment global cooperation, peace, and productivity. Boy, was I wrong.