Why is straw vote highly unreliable

It is hard to assign a broad methodology to all straw polls as each one is different in its own right , but many of them have candidates, such as in the Ames Straw Poll in Iowa , attract voters to cast their vote on who they believe should be the Republican candidate.

This brings us to our second question — should we pay any heed to the results of these polls? I previously stated many of the recent straw polls and their victors. There have been many polls, and there have been many different winners. But to answer this question, we only need to look at the candidates themselves.

And they certainly place weight on these polls. Tim Pawlenty dropped out of the Republican primary because of the lack of support the Iowa poll showed for his campaign. Entire strategies are formulated based on results of straw polls. That is because these polls show the weaknesses of particular candidates. And for this reason, candidates are perhaps wise to take caution to what the polls are telling them. However, are they good predictors of ultimate outcomes?

In answering this question, we are reminded of the presidential election. The Literary Digest conducted its own straw poll, which showed Franklin Delano Roosevelt being defeated by a large majority. Founded in , the Literary Digest was a venerable general interest magazine that catered to an educated, well-off clientele.

In , the magazine initiated a presidential election poll that became a popular feature. Subscribers mailed in sample ballots indicating their preference in the election. In , James A.

The magazine set out to launch its most ambitious poll ever in Over 10 million postcards were mailed to Literary Digest subscribers, people on automobile registration lists, and names in telephone directories, of which 2. The results indicated that Republican candidate Alfred Landon would defeat Franklin Roosevelt, receive 57 percent of the popular vote, and carry thirty-two states in the Electoral College.

Roosevelt won by a landslide, commanding 61 percent of the popular vote and winning in all but two states. While the magazine made no claims of infallibility, its methodology was heavily flawed. The sample was biased toward Republican-leaning voters who could afford telephone service, cars, and magazine subscriptions.

The volunteers who tabulated the results were not carefully trained, which introduced additional error into the calculations. The backlash from the errant results was monumental. Literary Digest election issue. The Literary Digest straw poll that incorrectly predicted that Alf Landon would defeat Franklin Roosevelt by almost 20 percentage points in the presidential election marked the end of the era of straw polls and the beginning of the use of scientific polls in reporting.

Commercial pollsters using scientific techniques correctly predicted that Roosevelt would defeat Landon in the election. These pollsters conduct polls for clients for a profit. The Gallup Poll administered personal interviews with a quota sample A method of selecting survey participants that involves choosing subjects on the basis of their fitting into particular demographic categories, such as sex and age groups.

Gallup correctly predicted the winners of the and presidential contests. However, during the election, three major pollsters—Gallup, Roper, and Crossley all incorrectly predicted that Republican presidential candidate Thomas Dewey would defeat Democratic candidate Harry Truman.

The quota sampling method used by these pollsters was problematic and was replaced by probability sampling A method of selecting survey participants at random. Barbara A. Bardes and Robert W. The presidential election did not start off well for Democratic candidate Harry S. As vice president, Truman was sworn in as president when Franklin Roosevelt died less than three months into his fourth term.

Truman was forced to deal with a variety of controversial issues, including the decision to drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which he believed would end World War II in the Pacific.

The Democrats were highly factionalized when they met in Philadelphia for their national nominating convention. They attempted unsuccessfully to recruit popular war hero Dwight D.

Eisenhower to be their candidate. When the convention adopted a strong civil rights platform, Southern delegations bolted and nominated their own candidate, Strom Thurmond of South Carolina. The pair was faced with an unenthusiastic constituency. In contrast, the Republican Party united behind Thomas E. Dewey, the popular governor of New York. California Governor Earl Warren, future chief justice of the Supreme Court, was the vice presidential candidate.

Pollsters and the press anticipated that Dewey would win by a landslide. Dewey by a heavy margin and devote my time and efforts to other things.

Normally, incumbents such as President Truman run low-key campaigns, and challengers such as Governor Dewey work hard to win. Dewey campaigned like a front-runner, remaining aloof and dignified while avoiding discussions of controversial issues.

Roles were reversed in the presidential campaign. Traveling in a special Pullman railroad car nicknamed the Ferdinand Magellan, after the explorer who circumnavigated the world, Truman covered 32, miles and gave rousing speeches. At each stop, Truman would introduce his family to the crowd, answer questions, and shake hands. Newsweek polled fifty political journalists a month before the campaign, and all of them stated that Dewey would win.

By Election Day, polls indicated that Truman might pull an upset, but journalists stuck to their story that Dewey would win by a landslide. Reports filtered in throughout Election Night that Truman was leading in the popular vote, but the press continued to report that he could not emerge victorious.

Louis, where he was presented with one of the papers bearing the infamous headline. Nonpartisan survey research organizations, such as the Pew Research Center and the Field Poll in California, provide data to news organizations and academics. Commercial pollsters, including Gallup and IBOPE Zogby International , provide polling services to clients and also share their data with the press, scholars, and the public through their websites.

The amount of polling data available today from commercial polling firms, academic survey research organizations, campaign organizations, trade associations, interest groups, media outlets, and online sources is almost overwhelming.

There are great variations in the type and quality of polling data. A public opinion survey fielded by a reputable organization using proper social scientific techniques differs greatly from a quick poll An online poll, usually consisting of one or two questions, that is asked of a nonrepresentative, self-selected sample of respondents. Questionnaires used to measure public opinion include a variety of question types.

Closed-ended questions Items on a questionnaire that provide respondents with a fixed number of options about a topic from which they can choose the one that best fits their position. Open-ended questions Items on a questionnaire that allow respondents to reply to a question in their own words. This type of question elicits more information from respondents and can be useful in gaining insight into sensitive topics. The drawbacks of open-ended questions are that people may not want to take the time to answer them and they are more time-consuming for pollsters to analyze.

In rare cases, studies have tracked the opinions of the same groups of people over years, even decades. The views of the women who attended Bennington College in the s were tracked through the s.

Duane F. Alwin, Ronald L. Cohen, and Theodore M. A public opinion poll A short questionnaire administered to a sample of people to ascertain the views of a larger population usually conducted by a commercial organization. A poll generally consists of a short questionnaire administered over a brief period of time to a sample of between six hundred and fifteen hundred people.

A survey A questionnaire typically administered by academic or government researchers to a representative sample people drawn from a larger population. Surveys consist of longer questionnaires designed to examine the foundations and consequences of opinions in some detail. Researchers may administer the survey to thousands of subjects interviewed over an extended period of time.

Michael W. Traugott and Paul J. New York: Chatham House, So what is a public opinion poll? It is a method of systematically interrogating a smaller, representatively-selected sample of the public; a sample that is fundamentally an accurate "mirror" of the opinions held by the entire population as a whole.

In other words, if the Gallup polling organization asks a national sample of Americans for whom they will vote in the presidential election of , George W.

Bush or Al Gore, then the percentage preferences found for each candidate in the sample should reflect, within an acceptable sampling error, how the much larger voting population of million or more Americans will vote. How is this possible? This will be discussed a bit later, but suffice it to say that Gallup has accurately predicted the presidential winner in most election years.

But even though scientific polls are far more accurate today, they still may run into problems. Such difficulties were clearly in evidence during earlier polling eras.

Prior to the era of modern scientific polling, magazines and newspapers would solicit opinions from their readers through face-to-face straw polls or mail surveys. However, despite a large number of responses, these techniques were unreliable. The straw vote stressed quantity of responses over the quality of the sample. In other words, an accurate cross-section of the voting population was unlikely to be achieved. Roosevelt, would lose to his Republican challenger, Alfred Landon.

The magazine had mailed postcard ballots to more than 10 million individuals whose names had been derived from automobile registration lists and telephone books. After more than 2 million ballots were returned and counted, The Literary Digest stated that Landon was the choice of a clear electoral majority. Where had The Literary Digest gone wrong? Unwittingly, the magazine had received ballots from predominantly wealthier Americans who could afford cars and telephones during a depression year when millions of other Americans were barely able to make ends meet.

So, the sizable number of poor, or even average, income Americans, unable to afford the luxuries of an auto or phone, were missing from The Literary Digest's sample. It was precisely these Americans who overwhelmingly supported Roosevelt in the election.

So, The Literary Digest's sample was "biased," i. In short, the poll was inherently flawed and led to a completely wrong prediction. The Literary Digest went out of business not too long after this polling debacle. In subsequent years, more-sophisticated scientific pollsters developed far better techniques, using personal interviews with small samples of selected voters.

But in , George Gallup's polling organization became famous for also creating a biased sample. Roughly two weeks before election day in November, Gallup confidently proclaimed Republican challenger Thomas Dewey to be the winner over the Democratic incumbent, President Harry S. Thinking Dewey to be far ahead and unbeatable, Gallup stopped interviewing voters. However, many voters changed their minds, switching from Dewey to Truman during that two week period. Gallup interviewers were not there to record those voting changes.

It must be remembered that a poll only represents a "snapshot of opinion" at a particular point in time.