Flaws in Polling Data Exposed as U.S. Campaign Season Heats Up
- Growing unease over reliability of public opinion surveys
- Technology, response rates and demography are all at issue
Why It's So Hard to Conduct Political Polls
Polls for the 2016 U.S. presidential race have been defying all expectations: Donald Trump as the persistent Republican frontrunner even as he insults large swaths of the country and brushes off policy questions; Hillary Clinton haunted by an email controversy Democrats shrug off while a Vermont socialist keeps gaining on her.
Are the polls correct? While that is hardly a new question, doubts are intensifying after a series of high-profile misfires around the world in the past year, notably in Greece, Israel and the UK. As politics and business lean increasingly on surveys and data, technological and social shifts are combining to challenge polls’ reliability in an entirely new way. Polling professionals have no solution; investors are wary.