Why Election Polls Have Stopped Making Sense
“Once upon a time, polls came and went without much fanfare or even notice. That time is gone. Today, a good portion of Americans plan their lives—or at least their Twitter feeds—around the latest political numbers. As every good political junkie knows, each day at 9:30 a.m. Eastern time, Rasmussen Reports releases its daily national tracking poll; three and a half hours later, Gallup comes out with its own. Wednesdays are typically when Quinnipiac University, the New York Times, and CBS unveil their “swing state” polls; on Thursdays, it’s NBC, The Wall Street Journal, and Marist College’s turn to share their “battleground state” polls. And Sunday nights are for PPP—a three-person public-opinion-research firm in North Carolina that produces upwards of 800 polls a year. “Sunday’s a dead news day,” Jensen says of his poll-release strategy, “so people who are living and breathing this presidential election are just sitting around all day nervously waiting for PPP’s latest poll to come out.”
