Journalists Love Polls

Journalists love polls.

And how could they not? Polls contain information. Objective, mathematical, precise information, presented with scientific certainty. No opinion. No fuzziness. Just the facts, ma’am.

Better yet, they come on shiny paper with color-coded, easily-understood, charts and graphs, and usually with an “executive summary” or some such right in front so a reporter really doesn’t have to read the whole thing before writing the story.
Best of all, the poll results, while themselves objective and mathematical, nonetheless demand analysis by the reporter, who is then able to don the cloak of the deep thinker without actually having to…you know…think, because the numbers speak for themselves.

Do not suppose that the admittedly wise-guyish tone of the preceding paragraphs signal the start of an anti-poll screed. Polls are indeed useful tools for anyone interested in what folks are thinking, a category that certainly includes journalists.

Furthermore, at least when it comes to indicating who’s ahead in an election campaign, the polls are almost always right. In recent years, blog and talk radio supporters of whoever is losing (John Kerrey in 2004, John McCain in 2008, Martha Coakley last month) kept trying to argue that the polls were wrong. The samples were too Republican (or Democratic). The pollsters can’t reach cell-phone-onlies. The respondents are lying. This survey was taken on the weekend when our supporters are less likely to be home.

Then comes Election Day and—by gum—the latest polls were pretty much on target.

But “accurate” is not a synonym for “meaningful,” and it is time to consider whether journalists are so poll-happy that they are suckers for anything with a chart and a margin of error even if the end result distorts rather than clarifies reality.

Polls are superb at measuring public opinion in a political campaign because, come Election Day, every voter has an opinion. The voter is either for Smith or for Jones. Otherwise the voter does not vote, making him or her not a voter.

The same does not hold true for, say, the question of whether the Senate should try to use “reconciliation” to pass a health care bill with a mere majority of the senators voting for it.

According to a Gallup Poll as reported on February 25 in Politico, “more than half of Americans are against Democrats using reconciliation to pass a health care bill through the Senate.” Not much more than half, to be sure. The poll showed that 52 percent of the respondents were opposed to using reconciliation while 40 percent were in favor. (Poll: 52 Percent Oppose Reconcilliation [1])

Let’s stipulate that the poll is accurate. The Gallup folks know how to do their job. But the poll is only meaningful if one assumes that 52 percent—or for that matter 25 percent—of Americans care about the wisdom of passing health care via reconciliation, have given even a moment’s thought to the question, or for that matter have the foggiest notion of what reconciliation is.

Or to put it another way, is this one of many cases in which a poll measures a public opinion which does not in fact exist?

Probably. Tiny indeed are the chances that Mr. and Mrs. America around their breakfast table, colleagues around the water cooler, beauty parlor customers under their hair dryers, or guys at the bar of the corner saloon have spent a composite 12 seconds discussing the pros and cons of reconciliation.

For this assumption we have strong evidence from…a poll. In January, the Pew Research Center took a poll asking some very specific questions, not about what people opined, but about what they knew when it comes to the legislative process.

Not much, as it turned out.  Just about a quarter of the public (26 percent) “knows that it takes 60 votes to break a filibuster in the Senate and force a vote on a bill.” The poll found. (Pew Political Knowledge Poll [2])

Considering that “filibuster” is a far better known term than ‘”reconciliation,” it’s reasonable to assume that not even a quarter of the voters know what the reconciliation process is, much less have a firm opinion on it.

Then there are polls that measure a public opinion which not only does not exist but which wouldn’t matter if it did. As the Washington Post reported last month, its own poll (with ABC News) supported some recent Gallup results indicating that “many (Americans) believe that although the 20th century may have been the ‘American Century,’ the 21st century will belong to China.” (US Poll: 21st Century Beongs to China [3])

Maybe they do, but who cares? Oh, as a hint of relative optimism/pessimism in the body politic, perhaps this factoid is marginally useful. But you know what? China either will or won’t become richer and more power powerful than the United States over the next 90 years. Public opinion really doesn’t have anything to do with it.

Nor is public opinion supposed to dominate every decision our government makes. Specifically, it is not supposed to determine how the criminal justice system works. Under the system created back in the late 1780s, the law and the Constitution make those decisions, regardless of the opinions most people hold at any given moment.

A point which seemed to elude CNN, as represented by Wolf Blitzer on his Situation Room program of February 10. Blitzer was armed with two polls (ABC News-Washington Post and Quinnipiac) showing that large majorities want terrorism suspects tried by military tribunals, not federal courts. When Rep. Jane Harman, the California Democrat, tried to explain why the trials should take place in the civilian court system, Blitzer cut her off: “You’re in the minority.” (Polls: Majority want Terror suspects to be tried in Military Courts [4])

Indeed she was. But according to the U.S. Constitution, that should make no difference. The point here is not that there is no Constitutional case to be made for trying some of these folks in military tribunals. The point is that it is a Constitutional and legal decision, one in which public opinion, however interesting, is not supposed to be decisive.

Public opinion polling is useful, but only if the public has an opinion on the subject under review. Sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes its opinion really doesn’t matter. And sometimes it shouldn’t.