September 28, 2023

Statistics don’t lie…but statisticians often do.  And sometimes they neglect or ignore, which is almost as harmful.

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Modern polling, as a “discipline” — no matter how undisciplined it might actually be, with few formal regulations and a soiled reputation — is a relatively recent phenomenon.  It was called “scientific” polling in 1936, when the magazine Literary Digest famously called the presidential election for Alf Landon.  (The magazine went belly-up, but a fledgling market researcher named George Gallup predicted Franklin Roosevelt’s victory.)  But polling quickly became the mother’s milk of contemporary politics.

If there are intrinsic flaws in polls, it would seem that the bright sunshine of exposure would counter them.  The plethora of competing polls — and their aggregation, as per the statistics compiled by Real Clear Politics and other “watchdog” reporters — would suggest clarity, safety in numbers.  It is also a matter of outliers balancing the reasonably honest and accurate mainstream surveys, in effect canceling each other’s bias.

As the 2024 presidential election looms, a quadrennial question will haunt every ballot, as it has since the founding the Republic.  It is the “question” of the Electoral College, whose presence and consequential effects are as real as flesh-and-blood candidates.  However, its propriety and utility are hotly debated.

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Proponents and detractors change their positions not according to theories of civics or fidelity to pure (or impure) democracy, but the partisan exigencies of the moment.  But it remains one of the cleverest constructions in the Framers’ blueprints: a sure way to balance the concerns and perquisites of a sprawling population, whether living in 13 states or across a large continent.

Despite calls for its abolition, the electoral vote system remains a wise and valuable device and is likely secure.  The Electoral College was defended in The Federalist Papers, and the practice of polling was contemporaneously an inchoate but vital ingredient of the earliest American campaigns.  In 2024, despite the usual opposition to the role of the Electoral College — including the counting ceremonies presided over by the vice president — there is a new realization that a handful of elections-within-elections will decide who will be the next American president.

Electoral votes are of determinative significance of swing states in presidential elections.  They put the “battle” in “battleground.”  And as the Electoral College is more significant than ever, it is curious that less attention is paid to electoral votes in many polls and pre-election surveys.  It is never absent, but total raw votes, popular tallies, nationwide head counts are practically irrelevant in comparison yet grab every spotlight.

Surveys and polls are natural byproducts of human nature, societal interaction: gathering opinions, making wise decisions, “looking before leaping.”  Indeed, polls drive virtually every aspect of American life.  Commerce is conducted according to surveys.  “Focus groups” drive — or justify — business decisions.  Polling is an industry that informs (or sometimes infects) product roll-outs, advertising budgets, and resource allocation.

In the cornucopia of political categories as polls are aggregated and tracked, even RCP breaks down Electoral College numbers…but for 2020 and previous presidential elections!  Political nerds and high-priced consultants are required to comb through individual state polls…calculate which states are “swing” or “battlegrounds”…and then add up the Electoral College numbers.  That is doable, but in 2023, it seems like plugging one’s computer into a candle.

Popular votes routinely are forecast and reported, down to fractions of percentage points.  Daily changes in popular vote trends — head counts, “raw” votes — are parsed to microscopic specificity.  But “moving” numbers and up-to-date forecasts of how states are trending — that is, applied to their electoral votes — scarcely are reported, especially in the aggregate, the “battleground states” grouping.  The Electoral College is the name of the game — realistically, it is the game — and yet it is tracked only, at this stage of the race, by those willing to call upon their adding machines.