Fordam, (US), Dec 20, GNA - Professor Monika Mcdermott, Professor of Political Science in the Fordam University of the United States of America has stated that public opinion was an essential ingredient during polling and campaigning.
“So some of the aspects to consider as the key one is that public opinion in an election is fluid. It’s always changing. People’s minds change on a regular basis. Things happen in campaigns that make people change their minds, that sway people, that firm up their opinions, that de-firm their opinions, and polls are just a snapshot in time.”
She was speaking to students on topics such as campaigns, polling, and voting behaviour, leading up to the United States Presidential election in 2020.
Professor Mcdermott said there were misconceptions about polling in American elections, and it was something that pollsters fought on a regularly
“And so I was coming today in the hopes of sort of dispelling some of the myths about polls and what they’re good for in terms of telling us, where elections stand at any given point in time.”
She said polling in America, was important because Americans were obsessed with polls and every election cycle they got new polling organisations starting up with a proliferation of polling information out there, and the media got obsessed with it.
She said polls were not predictions, but could only tell the public, where voters stood at one specific point.
“And one of the problems is we tend to treat them – at least, the media tends to treat them – as a prediction rather than as an actual snapshot in time…not that they’re not useful; I am a pollster, so I’m not trying to sell polls down the river, but they do have limits.”
The Professor said early national polls were not always a good indicator of who will win, and early state polls could actually also be misleading, even though sort of narrowing down like that was a good thing.
She said in America,” Iowa and New Hampshire, which we tend to focus on as the two earliest states, they are not alone in determining the eventual nominee of either party. They only have so much influence.”
She said nationally, Biden was the consistent national poll leader, ‘but national polls can’t be very – can be very bad for predicting eventual nominees. For example, I’ll show you some previous national primary polls. So this is a table of the 2004 Democratic primary, and these are the poll averages for the first half of the year before the primary and the second half of the year.’
“So if we had gone by pre-election polls at that point, we would have been completely misled about who was going to win the nomination, because Kerry didn’t come out as the leader until much, much later.
“Next, you’ve got the 2008 Democratic primary. This one’s even more stark because you’ve got Hillary Clinton consistently leading her opponents Barack Obama and John Edwards throughout the pre-primary season, throughout 2007.
“She was at a solid 38 points in the first half of the year and a solid 43 points in the second half of the year. So again, very misleading right here because everyone thought Hillary Clinton had it sewn up until Barack Obama took it away from her. And so again, national polls aren’t necessarily the way to go.”
She said for the Republican primaries, in “2008 you’ll see Rudy Giuliani, of all people, is the leader in the first half of the election and the second half of the election, but as we know, we never saw a President Rudy Giuliani. And John McCain, who was trailing in both the first and the second half ended up being the eventual nominee. And Fred Thompson, who got into the race late to try to sort of salvage some sort of – to be some sort of savior to the race to stop Giuliani, couldn’t quite do it and ended up with only 17 points. So he got in too late.
“In 2012 this is an example of where a national leader actually (inaudible) nomination, and Mitt Romney led consistently and strongly in both the first half of the year and the second half of the year. So that is what Joe Biden is hoping his model will be like, that he will – his consistent lead will translate into the nomination.
“And then you see in the 2016 Republican primary Donald Trump was only at 3 percent in the first half of 2015, but had risen to the top of the pack by the second half of the year, and that sealed the deal for him.”
She said there were models and all kinds of models and really anything could happen as people nationally were not that focused on the election and most people were not voting in their primaries until later in 2008.
“So at this point – or excuse me, in 2020. So that this point, it’s just a little bit too early to say, she added.
GNA
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