even sit out the general election. Perhaps it’s not too surprising, given that they

predicted Mitt Romney would beat Barack Obama in 2012 and instead he lost by about a 4 point

margin. Over the past few decades, polling has become increasingly inaccurate. With the

upcoming 2016 election it’s important to know, why do polls get it wrong so often?

Well, there are a number of reasons why polling accuracy has declined. For one, cell phones

are on the rise, while fewer and fewer people use landlines. Why would this be a problem?

Cell phones can’t be autodialed according to the 1991 Telephone Consumer Protection

Act. In order to call someone’s cell phone, a live person needs to be the one to do it.

For every thousand respondents, it takes about 20,000 calls to random numbers, most of which

are non working numbers. This is incredibly expensive and as a result, some polls don’t

include cell phones. And since younger people, lower income Americans and minority groups

often only use cell phones, they are extremely under-represented, compared to older, white

people who still rely on landlines.

Another problem with polling is the reticence to even state an opinion. Polls now have extremely

low response rates. Back in the late 1970’s, an 80% response rate was considered acceptable.

By 2012, the Pew Research Center reported that that number had dropped to 9%. Some say

this is due to fears over privacy and confidentiality. It’s pretty tough to determine the pulse

of a nation when relatively few people seem interested in sharing their opinions.

But polling inaccuracy extends past the phone line. Internet polls come with their own set

of problems. Most significantly, they do not account for a relevant group of responders.

While 93% of 18-29 year olds in the US use the internet, in the 2014 midterm elections,

only 13% of that age group showed up to vote. Meanwhile, more likely voters have considerably

lower rates of internet use, rendering online polls a poor representation of public opinion.

Another huge issue is the influence of early polling. Early polls tend not to correlate

with final results, as most respondents have not had the time to learn about new candidates

or issues. But those early polls are frequently the only source of information available for

preliminary media coverage. So uninformed polls leading to glorified coverage causes

a cyclical interest level. Potential respondents see the media talking about early poll frontrunners,

which influences them to voice a stronger opinion, and thus possibly skew future polls.

We’ve already seen this happening in the 2016 primaries. For example, online polls

showed that Bernie Sanders was the winner of the first Democratic debate. However in

more traditional phone based polls, Hillary Clinton came out ahead.

But inaccurate polling isn’t just a problem in the US. The most recent election in the

UK predicted that the conservative party would barely win by 1% which could have wreaked

havoc on parliament, but election results saw them winning by about 37% to the opposition’s

31%. With so many issues surrounding polling methods, it’s best to take them with a hefty

grain of salt.

While polling isn’t as reliable as it used to be, you can make up your mind for yourself

about upcoming presidential candidates by watching our playlist. If you want to see

more of a tongue-in-cheek take on politics, check out my channel Newsy News. Thanks for

watching TestTube! Don’t forget to subscribe to our channel so you don’t miss out on

new videos.