The Dark Art of Political Polling

There are more polls—and more confusion than ever, too

Early voters wait in line to vote in the presidential election on the first day of early voting at a polling station setup at the City of Miami City Hall on Oct. 27, 2012 in Miami, FLPhotograph by Joe Raedle/Getty Images

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By Peter Coy

November 2, 2012 at 4:16 PM UTC

This article is for subscribers only.

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This article is part of the November 5, 2012 issue of businessweek.

How could a Gallup Organization survey published a week before the election show Mitt Romney up by 5 percentage points, while a CBS/New York Times poll from the same period put him 1 point behind President Obama? Even professional poll watchers don’t know.

New technologies such as e-mail blasts have made it possible to field polls cheaply—and to publicize them on the Internet, bypassing traditional gatekeepers in the mainstream media. With hundreds of polls to choose from, candidates draw attention to those that support their case. The public is growing suspicious of a snow job, if you believe an Oct. 2 poll about polls by Public Policy Polling. It found that 42 percent of respondents say pollsters are manipulating results to show Obama ahead. “The. Polls. Have. Stopped. Making. Any. Sense,” Nate Silver, who runs the New York Times’ FiveThirtyEight poll blog, tweeted in September.