The campaign season that started my life long fascination with political communication was the 1977 race for mayor of New York City. Living in Brooklyn and not even old enough to vote at the time (I was 16), the Democratic party primary that year captivated me. It featured the eventual winner Ed Koch (a former liberal congressman from Manhattan) going up against the young Mario Cuomo (who was then New York's Secretary of State and who would later become governor). The wild Democratic Party primary race also included New York City feminist icon and former congresswoman "Battling" Bella Abzug (known for her large brimmed hats), and other candidates with backgrounds in city politics.
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| Ed Koch (left) and Mario Cuomo were the main participants in one of the most spirited political campaigns in history: the 1977 race for mayor of New York City. |
Because the incumbent mayor Abe Beame had the misfortunate of being in office as the city teetered on the edge of bankruptcy in the mid 1970s, everyone thought the fiscal crisis would be the dominant campaign issue. But lo and behold, the city had a massive blackout in July which led to widespread looting and chaos. Suddenly law and order dominated the campaign rhetoric zone. Koch that year hired political PR guru David Garth--a kind Don Draper Mad Men character--to reinvent him as a tough on crime moderate. They found out that Cuomo had at some point in the past taken a strong stand against the death penalty, and I remember the death penalty coming up in every televised forum; Cuomo was hounded with questions about his death penalty stance for the entire campaign. None of the journalists seemed to know or care that the New York City mayor has absolutely no impact on the death penalty.
The other thing I remember about that campaign was the Republican candidate, a very decent man named Roy Goodman. The kind of guy who has been banished from today's Republican Party. He happened to show up at a Nathan's Famous Hot Dogs restaurant in Queens that I was employed by at the time. He and his staff were sitting at a table munching on hot dogs and fries. He was impressed when I approached the table and asked if I could have a piece of campaign lit. He said of course, shook my hand, and asked for my vote. When I told him I was not old enough to vote, he smiled and said something like, "well make sure your parents get that lit, okay?"
You know what I have no memory of in that campaign? Public opinion polls. Oh I am sure there was polling data out there, but I honestly cannot recall one television or newspaper story (I read the New York Daily News religiously every day back then) that gave polling data more than a sentence or two of coverage. Everything was on the clash between the candidates and how their platforms were playing in various NYC neighborhoods. I especially enjoyed the polemical print columns by two legendary writers: Jimmy Breslin and Pete Hamill. Each of them were great at highlighting the hypocrisies and hyperboles of the candidates--and they did it in a moralistic and often humorous style that would later impact my own political writing.
I think it's time for mainstream and independent media to rethink their use of polls in political campaign coverage. Ever since the Chicago Tribune in 1948 famously published the "Dewey Defeats Truman" headline based on flawed poll data, there's been suspicion of polls.
Since then the accuracy of polls has increased dramatically, and the reputable polling firms usually do predict the results within the margin of error. Today, fake polls are a problem. but the obsessive reporting on reputable polls has been much worse for political journalism. News editors and reporters will claim that poll stories get more clicks, views, and shares than other campaign coverage, but that sounds like a cop out. Are they that lacking in creativity that they cannot find better ways to get and keep attention? Here's a few reasons why news editors and reporters should stop reporting on polls:
1. The Polls Promote Lazy Journalism. I have not calculated just how many, but the number of stories covering poll data--in print, broadcast, and digital sources--for the August primary in Wisconsin was patently absurd. It was the worst kind of "horse race" coverage of the campaign, with the emphasis on "who's winning" and "who's losing" far outpacing any meaningful coverage of issues, candidates' experience and records, interviews with voters, and other content that might help voters make a reasoned choice in the election.
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| Shortly after David Crowley's comeback win in the Democratic Party primary, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel was already running a front page, above the fold story on a poll. |
To be clear, horse race coverage of campaigns is not inherently bad. If the horse race is used to grab readers', viewers', and listeners' attention, that's fine. But ethical, rigorous journalism requires that once you've got attention, you then direct it to something that will make people think more critically about what's at stake in the election.
2. The Polls Allow Journalists To Pretend To Be "Neutral." In literally every occupation in the world, someone has to do the "heavy lifting." Think of what doing the heavy lifting means for an ethical news organization. Does it mean simply reporting that "40 percent like coke," "30 percent like Pepsi," and the rest are undecided? I mean, that's the most "neutral" way to talk about Coke v. Pepsi, right? Wrong.
Here's the way this usually plays out in Wisconsin politics: A journalist reports that "48 percent of likely voters support Crowley and 44 percent support Tiffany, but they are tied among registered voters." The journalist then cites spokespersons from each campaign to "explain" these results, usually by exaggerating the support for their candidate and taking cheap shots at the opponent. Exactly what is "neutral" about this kind of reporting? It's actually the opposite of neutral, because it legitimizes the worst qualities of the major parties and the campaign industrial complex. It's a kind reporting that empowers the political consultant class, while dumbing down the rest of us.
What I loved about Jimmy Breslin and Pete Hamill back in the day (the great Mike Royko was their equivalent in Chicago) was that they did not see their jobs as reporters as being on the side of the political hacks. Rather, they saw themselves as being on the side of THE PEOPLE. That's what's so sorely lacking in the coverage of polls: it pretends to be informing people, but actually succeeds in making us less informed.
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| "You don't have to print or re-report ANY poll, let alone EVERY poll." That's probably the smartest thing former NBC Meet The Press host Chuck Todd has ever said. |
4. The Polls Drive Campaign Funding Decisions. Because of our horrible and corrupt system of campaign financing, most candidates (especially in congressional and state wide races) have to rely on "deep pockets" to raise the resources necessary to hire competent staff and reach voters across a range of media platforms. How does the candidate show that he or she is worthy of the deep pockets? Often it is as simple as showing poll support. The polling data creates a kind of bandwagon effect, as people love jumping on board the winning wagon. But think about the absurdity of that for a minute: I'm going to support a candidate financially and/or in other ways not because they have some great policy ideas or personal qualities that I can get behind, but because they are . . . winning.
5. The Polls Are Weaponized To Uphold Anti-Democratic Agendas. Here I am especially talking about state wide and national campaigns, in which independent or third party candidates are told they will only be invited to debate if they meet an arbitrary polling threshold. Say what you want about the late H. Ross Perot, but his presence at the presidential debates in 1992 and 1996 did more to shake up the two party duopoly than pretty much anything in history. So successfully did Perot reveal the Dem and GOP candidates as parrots for political insiders that the two parties said "never again." Since then, even when a candidate is on the ballot in enough states to be able to win the election (like Ralph Nader every time he ran for president, or the Libertarian candidate in most elections), his or her inability to reach the arbitrary polling threshold is used to keep them out of the debates. And of course, the candidate's poll numbers are unlikely to rise significantly without being able to debate. The same thing happens now in US Senate, congressional, and other partisan races. It's a disgusting example of weaponizing polls to uphold the anti-Democratic agenda of those who control the two party system. It's a disgrace, really.
6. The Polls Are Being Manipulated By Prediction Markets. On August 22, Reid Epstein of the New York Times wrote a fairly terrifying article on modern polling and prediction markets:
The biggest new phenomenon influencing how campaigns are viewed is the spread of prediction market data.
The day before Michigan’s primary, Kalshi gave Dr. El-Sayed a 97 percent chance of winning. The morning of Wisconsin’s primary, Polymarket gave Mr. Crowley a 3.6 percent chance of victory.
While betting-market odds are often based on the wisdom of crowds and opaque measurements, they are amplified by powerful companies and reported on by legitimate news organizations that in some cases have financial partnerships with the prediction firms. CNN has such an arrangement with Kalshi and regularly shows the prediction market’s betting odds on television. The Wall Street Journal’s parent company has a partnership with Polymarket to display its odds within Journal content.
News editors and reporters need to understand that poll driven reporting is now being aggressively used for purposes that have nothing to do with strengthening our democracy. That by itself should be reason enough to stop reporting on them.
In conclusion, I understand that even if media outlets were to stop reporting on polls, campaigns would continue to use them. That's actually the way it should be. If Tom Tiffany or David Crowley or anyone else releases a poll showing their candidate in the lead, I as a voter immediately know that the results are probably being manipulated by bad faith actors in the campaign. But when a news organization releases poll data, that provides the data with a veneer of credibility that may or may not be deserved.
