Polling In America Is Broken & A Threat To Our Republic

HARRY HURLEY OPINION EDITORIAL

The American people can’t seem to agree on much these days.

We clearly are a divided nation.

I submit that perhaps this is something that all Republicans, Democrats and Unaffiliated Americans can agree ...

The polling industry is broken and must either be reformed or scrapped altogether.

Years ago, there was a tactic called a “Push Poll.” It went something like this:

“If you knew that Harry did (insert horrible allegation here) would you be more or less likely to vote for Harry?”

This was a thinly disguised attack approach, used to implant a horrible thought into the minds of poll respondents, who are voters.

These nasty push polls would then become manufactured news stories. This approach unjustly ruined many candidates over the years.

The use of push polls was banned a number of years ago.

The polling philosophy of today is also horrifically bad. Look at 2016. Look at 2020.

These bad polls have destroyed good candidates. Suppressed their fundraising capabilities. Stunted their voter turnout, because a false impression was created that they were badly trailing their opponent.

Case in point, the 2020 Trump v. Biden national polls yielded anywhere from an 8 to 12 percentage Biden lead. It’s presently 2 percentage points out of more than 140 million votes cast nationally.

Two days before Election Day, ABC/Washington Post released a final poll giving Biden a 17 percentage point lead over Trump in Wisconsin.

Reuters and one other national poll also gave Biden a double-digit lead over Trump in Wisconsin.

Here’s how it actually turned out.

Biden currently leads President Trump by .6 of 1 percent. How could a poll get it so wrong? By accident? On purpose?

Almost every single poll was wrong. Nationally and state-by-state.

After the debacle of 2016, the national news media and other pollsters promised that they would fix their mess.

2020 was even worse.

Polling is broken in America. Even worse, I strongly believe that they are biased and get it wrong on purpose.

Imagine what the result of the recent November 3, 2020 election could have been if the American people had known that it was a virtual 50-50 dead heat?

How many people were discouraged thinking that their candidate had already lost?

How many others felt that since it was essentially already over, that they didn’t even need to vote?

We desperately need to reform polling in America. This is a moral imperative.

Proper sampling must be adhered to, with methodologies that guarantee that the sampling is representative of actual voter turnout models.

The American people have been inundated on a daily basis by fake polls, prepared with purposeful bias, in order to try and affect the results of the election.

This is wrong and it’s a threat to our Republic.

The time is now for this bad practice to end. The American people have the power to put a stop to this. Please judiciously use your power.

If not now, when?