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| PERPLEXING POLLS | |
 October 31, 2000  |
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After a background report, Terence Smith talks with four experts about what polls mean in this presidential campaign. The NewsHour Media Unit is funded by a grant from the Pew Charitable Trusts.
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TERENCE SMITH: Joining me now to sort through the numbers
are: Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Research Center for the People
and the Press, Stephen Hess, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution,
Dotty Lynch, the senior political editor for CBS News, and Mark Jurkowitz,
media reporter for The Boston Globe. Welcome to you all. Andy Kohut, let me begin with you and ask you, the polls seem more contradictory than ever this year. Why?
TERENCE SMITH: That's the wrong time, you would argue, to take a poll? ANDREW KOHUT: That's the wrong time to do it. These polls are being done too quickly. We also have being brought into public polling many of the backroom campaign polling techniques, such as tracking polls and dial.... TERENCE SMITH: Tracking polls, explain briefly a tracking poll.
TERENCE SMITH: Steve Hess, given all these problems, the media still... news organizations still really obsess on polls. They make a great deal of use of them. |
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| Poll-driven stories | ||||||||||||||||||||
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STEPHEN HESS: They love them. Our data showed that really two-thirds of the stories on ABC, CBS and NBC from Labor Day were really poll-driven, that is they didn't all have polls, but they really could not have been written without them. That was the framework. It's a very different profile than previous elections. We usually build up to the horse race. By October we're terribly interested in it. But usually in September, we get our stories mostly about what the candidates stand for, their policies, their qualifications for office. This year it's started right at Labor Day at this two-thirds rate and has gone steadily forward this way. Now, my own personal opinion, although I love polls and horse race stories, is that this is out of balance. The polls... the horse race story probably is least useful to the voter in terms of what would a person do if they were elected president. TERENCE SMITH: Dotty Lynch, overuse, abuse?
TERENCE SMITH: And more often. Mark Jurkowitz, what's a reader or viewer to do when confronted with all of this? MARK JURKOWITZ: Ignore them, and I think to a great extent they probably
do. I mean, something that Steve says, I think makes a lot of sense.
I'm a journalist. That makes me a non-recovering pollaholic. Part of
what happens in journalism is a function of how we institutionally cover
campaigns. We don't tend to put education reporters on campaigns when
schools become the issue or health reporters on campaigns when HMOs
become the issue. Campaign reporters and their editors are people who
by definition like and understand strategy, consultants, ad campaigns.
They understand the strategic paradigm of campaigns. That, in effect,
is what they cover. And I think that's frankly why you get so much of
this regurgitated in |
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| A real horse race | ||||||||||||||||||||
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TERENCE SMITH: And perhaps drives the coverage as well, Mark?
TERENCE SMITH: Andy Kohut, the Brown University Professor Darrell West said the other day that he thought that this campaign would discredit the polling industry more than any since Truman defeated Dewey in 1948. Do you? ANDREW KOHUT: I doubt that. I think that's an overstatement. In the end, these polls are beginning to come together. We're going to do a pretty good job of forecasting the outcome of the election. I think the way they've been used has been inappropriate. I think what would really discredit them is if they were wrong, and I rather doubt they're all going to be wrong or even most of them are going to be wrong. I think one of the unfortunate things is polling has been used too often to just give the horse race numbers and not explore the interesting reason why there's so much voter indecision. The polls can and have told a lot about why Americans can't make up their minds. But that never gets to the top of the broadcast or to the top of the story. It's a constant rush to report who is ahead, and this zany up-and-down, which no one can figure out, and which only confuses and turns off the marginal news audience for political news.
STEPHEN HESS: I think we have to keep that in mind. Poll stories almost write themselves. So they're ideal for the tired reporter -- if you will -- and this is a very difficult campaign to report. That's the problem. I mean… a campaign in the midst…. If it were a campaign in the midst of a recession or a war or a scandal or had a charismatic figure or an overriding issue, we would see how it would be framed. In the absence of that, it's really a campaign about two candidates who have some very different points of view and some rather specific proposals to do it. It's a campaign, frankly, made for the NewsHour. I mean, it really is designed for. This actually, when you look at your profile, it's exactly the mirror image of the networks. It's two-thirds substance, one-third strategy. So I think if we get any of those things, like a war or recession or something, maybe the polls will take care of themselves, Andy. TERENCE SMITH: Dotty Lynch, what is the point and what is achieved by reporting a tracking poll, perhaps on a daily basis, and then immediately saying, as a caveat, that it's within the margin of error and it's therefore a dead heat? I mean, is anything served by that? |
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| A venial sin? | ||||||||||||||||||||
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TERENCE SMITH: Mark Jurkowitz, is this year different really than other years? Dotty made the point of the 24-hour news cycle and the additional demand, at least from the news organizations, but is it different? MARK JURKOWITZ: I don't think it's fundamentally different. I mean, other than all of these polls keep reinforcing the idea that we're in a kind of a dog fight that maybe we haven't seen since 1960. I mean, you know, we talk about tracking polls, sort of the one we all think of I think is the USA Today/CNN Poll, which we see every single day. And today USA Today on page one felt obligated to do their own story about the polls and their polls and asking the question is the race really this tight, talking a little bit about the methodology of the survey. So, you know, I think what's unusual about it is that these polls keep showing how tight and how fluid the race is, and I wanted to go back to one point that Andy made. I think the fact that this race has looked fluid does point out one of the problems the media have had. We have not been able to sort of figure out the dynamic that's driven this race back and forth. We keep reporting the polls and the poll results, but we don't really have a story line for why the public has vacillated between George W. Bush and Al Gore. At one point we thought it was because Gore kissed his wife energetically. At another point we thought it was because Bush kissed Oprah on the cheek. I mean, the one area where we're very culpable here is trying to dig out that dynamic behind these fluid numbers. TERENCE SMITH: Andy Kohut, do you think the media is culpable in that?
DOTTY LYNCH: But what if he's right, Andy? ANDREW KOHUT: I doubt that over a long period of time. Or we're in the wrong business. I'm sorry. But the point is that we have people sitting up there on these cable channels doing dial groups, showing public opinion as the way you might calibrate a good, professional wrestling match rather than the way the American public decides about an important issue like who they will vote for president. TERENCE SMITH: So public beware? ANDREW KOHUT: Yes. TERENCE SMITH: Okay. Thank you all very much. |
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ANDREW
KOHUT: A number of reasons. First and foremost because there's low voter
conviction. The polls... the disunity in the poll results reflects the
fact that people haven't made up their mind. And the differences in
survey methodology make for big differences when people have low conviction
and low certainty. When pollsters call them, they give one answer one
day and another answer another day. But there are also other things,
and the other things include the way in which the fast and furious way
in which the polls are being ordered up by the media. They're being
conducted, commissioned at times of high public emotion, a half hour
after Al Gore announces Joe Lieberman as his running mate. A poll is
done in four hours and a 19-point lead is erased because people are
exercised. And this is not a very stable.... 
ANDREW
KOHUT: A tracking poll is a continuous survey where a new component
of a sample is added each day to show the progress of public opinion.
It's generally designed to show the ways in which advertising campaigns
are being effective in markets or states. But applied to the national
electorate, what are they tracking? They've been tracking public opinion
for two months, and most of it, save around the time of the debates,
has been noise. 
DOTTY
LYNCH: I think a little overuse, and I think the 24-hour news cycle
has sort of made people think there are more. They're certainly hearing
them more, hour after hour after hour. The tracking polls give especially
the 24-hour networks an opportunity for a fresh story every few cycles
or so. But I also think the lull in the campaign that we had in the
spring, we did a lot of issue stories in the spring that usually are
reserved for the fall. So kind of the speeded up primary process has
changed the new cycle a little bit, and the polls changed right after
Labor Day, and the race got just about even. I think that's given us
a reason to do these a little bit more... a little earlier and a little
bit more often. 
the
public - because we ourselves, the journalists covering the story, are
fascinated with this. Having said that, let me make one unorthodox statement
here. In some levels, all the polls haven't been that bad for coverage
of this campaign. I mean, I think back to 1996, when we had a lot of
poll coverage, and all of them had Bill Clinton up by double digits
over Bob Dole. And I'm not sure I ever read a lead on a story that didn't
say, Bob Dole down by 15 points today announced his plan on taxes --
or Bob Dole still trailing by double-digits today attempted to do this
policy. And I think there was a real sense of boredom that that generated
among journalists and real sort of lackadaisical coverage. On one level,
the fact that these polls reinforce a very tight race, I think, has
energized some of the political coverage of this race. 
MARK
JURKOWITZ: And perhaps drives the coverage. I think reporters are out
there; I think they're listening closely to the candidates. The idea,
you know, the thing reporters love the most in politics is a real horse
race. The polls are reinforcing that idea. And I think on some level,
we're covering the campaign more intensively and closely than we would
have otherwise. 
TERENCE
SMITH: Steve Hess, is there anything easier to report than a poll story?
DOTTY
LYNCH: Well, I think that's one problem that I have. And I violate the
rule myself, because I'll say, well, our poll shows that it's statistically
tied. And then someone will say, but who is leading? And I'll say, well,
Gore or Bush. And we know ourselves as pollsters that that's wrong,
it's at least a venial sin to say, well, but Gore has a little bit of
a lead, but it's human nature. And it's what people want to know. And
everybody will ask you, who's going to win. So I think it serves a purpose
of at least defining the race, yes, it's still close, but this guy may
have had a little edge because of the debate. That one did something
because of an ad, good or bad or whatever. It gives you a way to understand
something that's uncertain. And I think myself, some of the poll bashing
is just people are uncertain. They don't know what's going to happen.
And it sort of, you know, kill the messenger, kill the pollster, try
to blame somebody for the uncertainty. 
ANDREW
KOHUT: Oh, I think the media is culpable. We haven't blamed the pollsters
yet. To a certain extent, the pollsters have joined the media circus.
There's a whole new breed of pollster, the tabloid pollster, this fella
is going to do a daily poll. This is not a poll in the likes of which
Dotty or I would do. He does it with an auto dialer that calls people
up with a recorded message. If you believe that, you believe anything.
And we have....