Polls and More…

Since I’ve been asked to talk with a GCLS academy class, I wanted to do my research, so I created a short poll to ask readers what is the most effective social media presence. To be honest, I’m a little nervous about talking to the class because although I have a presence, I’m not entirely sure how effective that’s been in helping drive readers to get to know me and my books. That got me thinking about the disastrous results of modern-day polling, particularly related to national elections in the US. So, of course I had to do research on this. Why has the polling been off?

Unfortunately all polls reach only a narrow subset of the population. First, only about 60% of the population who can vote, do…even in high-turnout elections. Pollsters might narrow their polls to those who are registered to vote, but not everyone registered to vote actually votes for various reasons. Additionally, if you actually look at the polls conducted, there is an extremely small subset of the voting population polled. Think about it…if approximately 160 million people vote, and that’s in a high-turnout election, but the poll only includes a couple of thousand…you do the math. How can we possibly extrapolate accurate data based on far less than 1% of the population?Some of the excuses for the 2016 misfire involved differences between Democrats and Republicans. But how did the researchers discover this? Another poll? Apparently, Democrats are more likely to participate in a poll but less likely to vote, while Republicans are less likely to respond to a survey but more likely to vote. Hmmm… that certainly did not describe the red wave that never happened in 2022.The tried-and-true method of phone polling just doesn’t work anymore. Eighty percent of Americans do not answer their phones. I know the pollsters have expanded their methods to URL, QR code (directing them to the survey), text, email, a phone number for respondents to call (inbound dialing), and SSRS reaching out to them by phone (outbound dialing). I don’t know if this has actually improved polling accuracy…I suppose we shall see in November. One thing I will say is that I ignore all those methods because we now receive so many texts, emails, etc, that it is overwhelming. I automatically delete everything political that comes my way. So much for Democrats being more likely to participate in a poll but less likely to vote. I always vote and would never respond to a poll.

I’ve posted my poll on Facebook, but I’m also including the link here and would very much appreciate it if you would take a few minutes to help me out! Just click this link: https://form.jotform.com/242353741182049. Of course, you can also make my day by clicking any of the links below to check out my latest releases or my backlist!

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