Page 2 - Boca ViewPointe- January '20

Page 2, Viewpointe January 2020

JICYMI

Just In Case You Missed It Thursday, a majority of registered voters (52 percent) are 55 percent, of voters between the ages of 18 and 34 saying
doubtful about surveys they hear about in the news media. they believe most or almost all polls. Elderly voters were
By Bob Kronish Twenty-nine percent of respondents said they don’t the most skeptical; only 41 percent of voters who were
believe most polls but do trust a few while 19 percent 65 and older said they believed most or all surveys.
The Popular Poll said they “almost never” believe that polls are accurate. That most Americans continue to doubt the accuracy of
Performance – Part II While the majority were mistrustful of polls, 15 public opinion surveys is notable considering how that most
One of the most percent of respondents said they “almost always” believed pollsters performed historically well during the November
frequently (and perhaps in polls they heard about in the press. Thirty-three percent midterm elections.
the most logically) asked said they believed most polls but not all of them. Male “They were borne out to be really, pretty accurate in
questions about polling is respondents in the Hill-HarrisX poll tended to be more the most recent elections in 2018,” Republican pollster
“How accurate are they?” trusting of polls and more skeptical of them than women. Jim Hobart said on “What America’s Thinking,” Hill.
FiveThirtyEight, sometimes Twenty-three percent of men said they “almost never” TV’s show about public opinion and the polling industry.
rendered as 538, is a website believe surveys while only 16 percent of women said the “We make every effort to get things right and we’ve got a
that focuses on opinion poll analysis, politics, economics, same. Among men, 15 percent said they “almost always” pretty good track record.” While Republican pollsters are
and sports blogging. The website, which takes its name believe polls are accurate. Just 9 percent of women confident in their craft, GOP base voters appear not to be.
from the number of electors in the United States electoral agreed.
college, [538 1] was founded on March 7, 2008 as a polling Younger people were the most trusting with a majority, JICYMI on page 3
aggregation website with a blog created by analyst Nate
Silver. In August 2010, the blog became a licensed
feature of The New York Times online. It was renamed
“FiveThirtyEight, Nate Silver’s Political Calculus.”
Much maligned for their performance in the 2016
general election – and somewhat unfairly so, since the
overall accuracy of the polls was only slightly below
average that year by historical standards – American
election polls have been quite accurate since then. Their
performance was very strong in the 2018 midterms,
despite the challenge of having to poll dozens of diverse
congressional districts around the country, many of
which had not had a competitive election in years. Polls
have also generally been accurate in the various special
elections and off-year gubernatorial elections that have
occurred since 2016, even though those are also often
difficult races to poll.
Does that mean everything is looking up in the
industry? Not necessarily. It should be emphasized
that assumption could be questioned since the media is
just flatly wrong when it asserts that the polls can’t be
trusted. In fact, American election polls are about as
accurate as they’ve always been. That doesn’t mean
polls will always identify the right winner, especially in
close elections. (As a simple rule of thumb, polls “call”
the right winner 80 percent of the time, meaning they
fail to do so the other 20 percent of the time – although
upsets are more likely to occur in some circumstances
than others – but the rate of upsets hasn’t changed much
over time.
The Hill is an American website, based in Washington,
D.C. which began as a newspaper publisher in 1994. On
its website, The Hill describes its output as “nonpartisan
reporting on the inner workings of Congress and the nexus
of politics and business.” It published the following the
beginning of the year (2019).
According to a new The Hill-HarrisX poll released

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