Public polls lack openness and scrutiny, say party pollsters

In an open letter, 19 campaign pollsters say that the media’s practice of “judging polls by their accuracy in the closing weeks of an election rather than by the professionalism with which they were conducted is unfortunate”.

Among the signatories are Democrat pollster Diane Feldman, Republican pollster Bob Moore, and Joel Benenson, who conducted polling for Barack Obama’s presidential election campaign.

Public polls, they explain, differ on whether they reveal information on how voters were sampled and screened, whether bilingual interviewing took place, and whether potentially biasing questions were asked before the main ‘horse race’ question.

The authors raised particular concerns about hard-to-reach groups such as ethnic minorities, whose views may be underrepresented or distorted by weighting in some polls.

The letter highlights the standards developed by the American Association of Public Opinion Research (AAPOR), which call for “full and complete disclosure” of survey methodology at the time results are released. “We would urge extreme caution in coverage of polls that do not meet these standards,” the authors said.

As political observers look back on the US mid-term elections to see which polls got it “right” and which got it “wrong”, the authors call for polls to be judged by their professionalism “rather than by apparent accuracy in the closing weeks of campaigns”.

Public polls “have the capacity to shape media and donor reactions to election contests”, the authors write. “We would urge the media to examine whether publically released polls meet AAPOR standards in choosing whether or not to cover them.”

“Polls that show the most dramatic numbers in terms of candidates’ winning or losing often draw the most media response,” they write. “It is therefore especially critical to subject such polls to rigorous examination.”

In a statement to the Huffington Post, AAPOR president Frank Newport said the association “appreciates and endorses” all efforts to encourage adherence with its code and standards.