You love polls: Agree or disagree?
Please take our poll: “A week after the 2012 elections ended, I am:”
Tired of polls.
Extremely tired of polls.
So tired of polls that I want to throw this newspaper (or tablet or smartphone) across the room.
Hmmm, sorry we asked.
Don’t blame Americans for being a little poll-shocked at the end of a rather bumpy election season. Polls wouldn’t be such a tedious matter if they more often did a better job predicting the future.
Consider the presidential race between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney.
National polls by Gallup — one of the industry’s best-known brands — showed Romney the clear leader in the last few weeks before Nov. 6. Wrong: Obama won, and rather handily.
Some other pollsters were almost as far off base, including several that didn’t call cellphones. That’s an antiquated idea in 2012 — and one that likely skewed pro-GOP by eliminating voters who tended to be younger, minorities and city dwellers.
Pollsters point out that things change during a campaign and polls can, too.
Look to Missouri, where Todd Akin held an 11-point lead over U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill in a SurveyUSA poll in early August. Then came Akin’s “legitimate rape” comment, undercutting his campaign. By early November, SurveyUSA showed McCaskill with a 15 percent lead — just about her real winning margin.
So after a year like 2012, we offer a timeworn chestnut: The only poll that counts is on Election Day.
Poll: Agree or disagree?
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