Political Poll Dbq

Over the last few years polling has become a vital part of the United States election process. The media as well as the voting population take into consideration the results of various political polls, but in most cases the polls do not accurately represent the views of a population effectively. The media’s failure in presenting polls through television broadcasting has led to distorted data, and an overflow of political polls in America. The inclusion of media to presidential elections has allowed many political leaders to undermine their competitors, and bolster their chances of winning by falsely representing themselves to the many American viewers. Despite the many advances in the polling techniques, and the increasing role of the media in elections, the polls conducted do not accurately represent the views of Americans.

America has too many political polls, and due to the fact of an overflow of political polls Americans pay too much attention to them, causing key states to rely heavily on the inaccurate data of political polling. In source C John Fund’s article “Polling isn’t perfect”, he acknowledges current problems the pollsters of today face. John Zogby a pollsters himself believes “…nightly tracking

polls that both candidates and reporters fixate on are less reliable than larger polls taken over a longer period of time.” based off this quote Zogby believes that political polls of today are less reliable than ever, as well as political polls have fewer people participating in answering the polling questions.

(Source C). In source C Dave Winston a republican pollster, believes that political polls do not represent the views of the population accurately due to the fact “Surveys this year found that between four percent and twelve percent of voters in key states made up their mind on who to vote for on Election Day.”, he also sees that many pollsters cant poll on

Election day because last minute views are impossible to predict, portraying how the populations view in America is not well represented by Political polling (Source C). Mr. Zogby tells the Wall street Journal that “… I have to make an average of seven phone call a day to get just one person willing to spend 20minutes or so it takes to answer his polling questions.”, this statement alleged by John Zogby relates to Dave Winston’s statement that “ Answering Machines, Caller ID and other screening devices make pollsters easier to avoid.”(Source C). Dave Winston sees this as a problem because when a pollster finally gets a hold of someone willing to answer the poll questions, it no longer represents the American voters as a whole, all leading back to the fact that political polls do not accurately represent the views of the population.
Political elections have an abundance of problems that show how most media polls on the surface seem as if they are identical, but can produce different results. Due to the failure of media polls being able to produce identical results continually they tend to not put results into context and can’t explain why the same data may be misleading. For example “… asking people who they will vote for will draw a higher undecided or refusal rate rather than asking them who they support…/”,this example form source D is wording bias, one of the many problems the author of the article writes about Frank Luntz (Source D). The example also qualifies the claim that political polls do not accurately show the populations views, because wording bias of media polls can produce misleading data, it also fails to put the results in context and wording bias does not allow the continuation of identical results of media polls. Another problem in polling, similar to word bias, is order bias. An example of order bias would be “…when respondents are asked whether they themselves are better off than today than four years ago, then asked to rate George Bush’s handling of the economy and only then asked whom they want for president. Bush’s support will be several points lower than if the ballot question is asked first.”(Source D).This example also qualifies how political polls do not accurately show the populations views, because it portrays how the questions are ordered in polling and how they can produce different results, which tends to be misleading and usually fails to continually produce the same results, even though the media polls seem identical on the surface.
During most political elections there are media polls as discussed before, but media polls are based off of people’s opinions which change overtime. Also due to the fact that surveys produce different results a constant political view of the population cannot be determined, so this increases the chances of having misleading results and an incorrect representation of the populations view in a state. The chart in Source A shows two response stabilities over repeated interviews, American relations with Russia and Level of Government Services. As seen in Source A, whether or not people feel it is important for the US to try and get along with Russia differs between January of 1980 and June of 1980, in a period of six months (Source A). The cooperate, middle, tougher , and unsure change their views over time and this distorts the original polls conducted causing a massive or minor change in the polls, portraying how political polls do not accurately represent the views of a population accurately.
Throughout the years media polls have increasingly become a central part in election coverage, and slowly but surely creating the illusion that people’s opinions exist, when it doesn’t in reality. Although the polls have been in abundance in America, they usually are incorrect and misleading, resulting in states that use media polls to have inconsistent data during political polling. These problems falsely represent the views of a state’s population, and also allow political leaders running the political polls to undermine their competitors, and bolster their chances of winning. Source C, D, and A all defend the claim that political polls do not accurately represent the views of a population correctly.