Political Polls Are Facing the Apocalypse
Chelsea Leu, Wired
THIS PAST WEEK in Iowa, Ted Cruz took the lead away from Donald Trump, the floofy-haired presidential candidate who’s been dominating polls and political coverage for the past six months. Unsurprisingly, this made news—polls provide numbers that promise to objectively quantify just how well a candidate is doing. But a lot of methodology goes into these polls, and that affects how much voters (and mere political spectators) should trust them. Here’s how pollsters arrive at these numbers, and why they’re often not as accurate as they could be.
THIS PAST WEEK in Iowa, Ted Cruz took the lead away from Donald Trump, the floofy-haired presidential candidate who’s been dominating polls and political coverage for the past six months. Unsurprisingly, this made news—polls provide numbers that promise to objectively quantify just how well a candidate is doing. But a lot of methodology goes into these polls, and that affects how much voters (and mere political spectators) should trust them. Here’s how pollsters arrive at these numbers, and why they’re often not as accurate as they could be.