Very soon, the electorate in the U.S. will be afforded the chance to evaluate the candidates for President and Vice President in nationally televised debates. Voters are hoping that they will give them much-needed information. Rallies and tweets have provided scant substance on the policy prescriptions of each candidate. Hyperbole seems to be the only item on the menu.
Adding to the confusion, news outlets are focused on the many polls that come out on a daily basis, which seem to rise and fall for each candidate depending on what has occurred in the most recent 24-hour news cycle.
What is the real value of polls, and how much should we rely on their results? A recent article in Wired magazine tells the story of a start-up company called Civis Analytics that was formed out of the realization that traditional public polling was providing useless and misleading data. The wake-up call happened in the summer leading up to the 2012 election, when public polls in Michigan showed President Obama dropping 10 points. Analytics produced by the models that were invented by the founders of Civis showed otherwise, and the Obama campaign stayed the course rather than devote another large sum to advertising and other efforts. In the end, the polls proved to be wrong.
The article points out the current state of polling. “Today’s polling landscape appears so fraught that Gallup, long the industry leader, opted out of presidential horse-race polls this year; the reputational risk of being wrong was simply too high.”
Christine Campigotto, who oversees Civis’ work with nonprofits and NGOs, explains: “In public polling, you see a lot of big swings…driven more by poor sampling methods and bias in the response. They’re making a headline out of statistical noise. Not that many people change their minds between Wednesday and Friday.”
The article points out the reasons for the failures of traditional polling:
“The classic pollster’s technique known as random digit dialing, in which firms robo-dial phone after phone, is failing, because an ever-dwindling number of people have landlines. By 2014, 60 percent of Americans used cell phones either most or all of the time, making it difficult or impossible for polling firms to reach three out of five Americans. (Government regulations make it prohibitively expensive for pollsters to call cell phones.) And even when you can dial people at home, they don’t answer; whereas a survey in the 1970s or 1980s might have achieved a 70 percent response rate, by 2012 that number had fallen to 5.5 percent, and in 2016 it’s headed toward an infinitesimal 0.9 percent. And finally, the demographics of participants are narrowing: An elderly white woman is 21 times more likely to answer a phone poll than a young Hispanic male. So polling samples are often inherently misrepresentative.
“More broadly, Civis’ work is uncovering an uncomfortable truth for many horse-race pollsters: Public opinion just isn’t that dynamic. Political support shifts slowly and subtly, generally over months and years rather than in response to the day-by-day, headline-blaring gyrations the media trumpets as breaking news.”
Which brings us to the subject of the debates. I believe that the germane questions are: how useful are they, and what can the electorate truly learn about the fitness of the candidates for office. Adding to those is the possibility that Donald Trump may choose not to participate. He has raised issues about the timing of the long-scheduled debates, and further has suggested that there shouldn’t be a moderator.
Politico made the case earlier in the year that “debates have ruined politics”. “Debates today, mostly frivolous popularity contests in which the candidates thump their chests and trade one-liners, tell us next-to-nothing about which candidate would actually make the best president—in fact, they put the most substantive competitors at a serious disadvantage.
“Ronald Reagan defeated Jimmy Carter in debate in 1980 not by greater mastery of issues but by deft one-liners. “There you go again,” he said with a smile and a shrug when Carter recited Reagan’s record of opposition to Medicare. The line conveyed nothing of substance yet much of personality, and voters ate it up.
“More telling was the line Reagan used against Walter Mondale in 1984. An initial debate between the two showed viewers a Reagan they hadn’t seen: stumbling, confused, frustrated. The dismal performance raised grave questions about Reagan’s age and his fitness to continue in office. Even the Reagan-friendly Wall Street Journal asked if he was too old to be president. Reagan finessed the worries with a second-debate quip about not exploiting his opponent’s ‘youth and inexperience.’ The remark completely sidestepped the real issue, but viewers and voters laughed, and Reagan rode the laughter to reelection.
“Debates today don’t merely fail to reward attention to issues, they actively punish attention to issues. Trump has led the way with a campaign built on emotion and personality, and his success has compelled other candidates to follow suit. Issues are boring, comparatively speaking, and boring doesn’t draw viewers and voters.”
Beginning with the 2000 presidential campaign, I have felt that there is a better way to find out what the candidates really know. Call it an impractical fantasy, but it originates from my time in school so many years ago, when I had to take the dreaded blue book exams. Logistical details are missing (e.g., who would conducts the test), but the outline goes like this:
1. Put together a list of questions relating to the most important policy concerns affecting our country;
2. Don't show the questions in advance to Mr. Trump and Secretary Clinton, and the other two if we want to include them;
3. Put them in rooms by themselves. No phones or other way to communicate with the outside world;
4. From the list of questions, they would pick two for which to provide a discussion of the issue and their solutions to address them. Give them a supply of blue books. The top of each page would be imprinted with the name of the respective candidate;
5. Give them 2 hours maximum to complete the test. One hour each should be enough time for an informed person that wants to lead our country;
6. After completion, take photos of every page of each filled-out book and immediately post to social media.
Who would provide articulate and comprehensive answers? I’d love to see those pages.
D. Norman
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