Beyond the Horse Race, Chapter 4 Summary
“Beyond the Horse Race, How to Read Polls and Why We Should,” is the latest book released by our founder John Zogby. Here we take a look at Chapter 4.
In Chapter 4 of Beyond the Horse Race, John Zogby discusses how media, political campaigns, and the public at large misuse or misconstrue tracking polls. This really speaks to the risk of reliance on top-line polling numbers horse-race-like focus on who is leading and who is trailing to the exclusion of more meaningful information that polls might offer. This view is reinforced by what Zogby said, “polls give so much more than a picture of the horse race but deeper trends, motives of the voters, and demographic shifts that are essential to understand the political landscape.”.
He starts off by distinguishing between predictive and informative polls; the former projects the results of elections, while the latter tries to find the ‘what lies beneath voter behavior and public sentiments’. But, as he argues, the media usually focuses on the former to the detriment of the latter, thereby reducing the value of what polls are really capable of telling us. According to Zogby, polls are much better to use as instruments of insight to explain why people support particular candidates or issues, and what influences are making the difference.
One huge underlying theme of this chapter is the risk of misjudging minor fluctuations in the polling numbers. Zogby then said that small fluctuations-a candidate moving up or down a point or two often portrayed as great surges or losses where, if anything, they are indicative of little more than statistical noise or insignificant movement within a margin of error. Hence, he repeated, such a movement has to be taken with a great deal of caution not to mislead the campaigns and the public.
He further adds that in the future, less emphasis would be on the short-term fluctuations and more on what he calls the ‘long-term trends and raw data behind the figures’.
Zogby explains this by revisiting the 2000 U.S. presidential election. His daily tracking polls, he says, showed some important deviations in key demographics by the last days of the campaign, for example, women and seniors were breaking more for Al Gore.
The top line was a dead-heat race between George W. Bush and Gore, but through crosstabs-the demographic breakdowns in the polling data-lay the Zogby found his indicator of the real shifts; this deeper level of insight brought a far more nuanced picture than the overall polling averages could ever have shown. The chapter also includes how to read polling information “from the bottom up.” That is to say, take the detailed demographic and issue-based information and work your way up to the top-line results. This, according to Zogby, brings up a much clearer and more realistic picture of what the polls are really saying.
For example, one might think from a poll alone that one candidate leads the race, but in reality, it may emerge in the crosstabs that for independent or suburban voters, its bottom is falling out. That kind of information is what saves campaigns from changing their strategies or targeting their demos more precisely without it.
He is also critical regarding the way the media treat the polling data.
He believes that in this ever-present need to dramatize headlines and simplification of the storyline within media discourses, the findings of polling, in actuality, are distorted pretty often. He says, first of all, that the headlines may blow up the lead or loss of support in what has been called momentum or despair for the candidate: He wants the journalists to dig deep and report more nuance than just asking questions, which themselves are headline-creating based upon the results of polls.
Key Lessons – Chapter 4:
Don’t Sweat the Horse Race For too many people, the only thing that counts in a poll is who’s leading. Top lines, says Zogby, are less important to understanding what’s really key: voter motivations and demographic trends.
Polling Informs and Doesn’t Predict: Rather than depicting the election results only, the polls should understand the logic behind the voter’s support for any particular candidate or issue. Watch out for little bounces. The ups and downs are not reflective of anything, and Zogby reiterates here that polling firms and analysts need to look past those small changes and concentrate on the longer pattern.
Time to read polls from the bottom up: The real value of polling actually is in the detailed demographic and issue-based data. It’s there the pollsters ought to focus their attention in trying to discern what the polls really show.
Throughout this chapter, Zogby argues that polls should be understood as instruments of insight and understanding, not predictors of the end result of an election. Analysts who closely look through the polls and do not just scan the headlines start to have a much better sense of what the voters are really thinking and what drives their decisions.
