Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Polling

Over the past few years political campaigns have become increasingly complex and as a result of this, there has been a dramatic increase in public opinion polling. It not only helps to guide political campaigns strategies but it also helps to guide the political decisions made by candidates , elected officials, and their advisors.(Hollihan Pg 168). According to Dictionary.com polling is define d as “a sampling or collection of opinions on a subject, taken from either a selected or a random group of persons, as for the purpose of analysis”. Political polls are not only important to political candidates but are also now being used by reporters to see what stories the public wants them to cover in their newspaper articles. In this blog I will discuss the history of the polling process, the most important strategy used to conduct polls, and the different types of political polling that are currently being used in the United States today.

I would like to start off by discussing the history of political polls in the United States. According to Hollihan “the first public opinion polls in the United States were probably the pre-election straw polls conducted by Harrisburg Pennsylvania during the 1824 presidential campaign”. (Hollihan Pg.170) These polls were a lot different than the polls that we conduct in today’s society because they were not scientific polls, but rather polls created by partisans to help express their own opinions and possibly help shape the outcome of their elections. According to Wisegeek.com straw polls are “an informal opinion survey. The term "straw poll" is thought to have come from a 1800s American farmland practice of tossing "straws in the wind" to test wind direction. It was used in the 1820s; some American newspapers included a straw poll that informally surveyed public opinion as a way of testing the direction of the political winds.” The first known straw polls to be truly effective were held in 1924 by the Literary Digest. They gathered names from registration polls, tax lists, and telephone directories and then distributed the ballots by mail. The literary Digest found these polls to be strongly effective and it helped them to predict the outcomes of the 1924, 1928, and 1932 elections. (Hollihan Pg171)

Out of the Straw Polling process, came the scientific method of polling. It began in “the 1930s when George Gallup conducted surveys on behalf of his mother in law Mrs. Alex Miller, the first women secretary in the state of Iowa” (Hollihand Pg. 171). At first this new style of scientific polls were incredibly in accurate compared to the straw Polls conducted by the Literary Digest, but this new style of polling lead the process for the way in which we use polls today in the United States. This new scientific polling process was incredibly expensive to conduct, so only the wealthiest of candidates in the 1950’s could afford to use them. As a result of this, candidates who were not wealthy fell far behind in the political campaigning process. As the scientific process of polling continued, “new advances in technology allowed for rapid analyses of poll results and made the polling process more efficient than previous time consuming methods of manually analyzing them” (Hollihan Pg. 172). There is no doubt in my mind that political polling provided both the candidates and citizens of America with a new way to process and present information in the United States. I feel that the invention of the polling system is still one of the most important inventions used by politicians in today’s society.

The next idea that I would like to discuss is the strategies used by political candidates to conduct polls in the United States. According to Hollihan public opinion polls were used by candidates in many different ways. Some used them to determine whether they should run for a specific political office, or to determine how to steer the course of their campaigns. They also helped to provide a way to identify what issues were of most concern to voters and provided suggestions on how those issues should be addressed. They helped to identify possible supporters and helped to determine how much knowledge voters truly had on the subjects they were voting on. Polls were also used to monitor the effectiveness of campaigns and helped candidates to spot trends as the election drew closer. (Hollihan) There is no doubt that the political polling process, if used correctly, would not only help candidates to win the election, but also provided a way for citizens to determine who they were going to vote for.

There are several aspects that are common in the polling process, aspects like sampling, constructing the survey, and pushing polling. According to Hollihan, sampling was the most important aspect of political polls and he stated “Perhaps the most important aspect in the creation of any research study is the design of the sample and the careful control over its implementation” (Hollihan Pg. 173). This process of sampling uses the theoretical objective of sampling to sample every person in the population who has a chance of falling into the sample. They then used the probability theory to compute the likely hood that respondents will be included and it also helped to predict the size of the sample. The next process was to use stratification to divide the sample into characteristics that measure the elements of the population. (Hollihan) All of these processes helped to reduce sampling error, which in turn could lead to ineffective results that could cost candidates money and provide them with a large percentage of result errors. Throughout my life time I have participated in several polling’s which were conducted over the phone. I found them to be interesting at first but soon got tired of people calling me to take a poll all the time. Although I feel like I did contribute to the political process, I do not believe that my opinion really mattered that much, due to large population of America and the mass amounts of people participating in these polls.

The final issue that I would like to briefly discuss is the different types of political polling used by candidates to day in the United States. There are six different types of polls currently being used in the United States today but I will only discuss the three most commonly used in the United States today. Political polls used in the United States today include mail surveys, telephone interviews, internet polls, personal interviews and exit polls. One of the most common poll surveys conducted are mail surveys. According to Hollihan “mail surveys are one of the most common polling processes because they are cheap to conduct, Unbiased because there is no interviewer trying to persuade them, and the privacy that is offered by conduction the survey in the comfort of your own home”(Hollihan Pg.176). Some negative aspects of mailed surveys is the fact that many people address them wrong or do not mail them in properly, so the candidate never receives the results. This can prove to be a waste of both time and money.

The next most commonly used survey in today’s society is the telephone survey. According to Hollihan, most political polling today is conducted through telephone. These surveys can be completed fairly quickly and provide instantaneous results. Some negative aspects that telephone surveying brings to the table is the fact that some Americans don’t have telephones at all and others simply ignore the calls from the polling candidates. The time of day in which these surveys are conducted can skew the results and many people have to work during the day. This makes people tired when they get home from work and they end up not unwilling to participate in the survey. Although the telephone survey has proven to be effective over the years, it has many draw backs to it that candidates and the surveyors must deal with.

The final type of polling that I would like to discuss is internet polling process. There are many benefits to online polling according Hollihan. Some of these benefits include reaching large numbers of people, lower costs, and increasing access to the internet. Hollihan states that “online respondents might give more truthful responses to questions and would be more willing to respond to an internet poll” (Hollihan Pg. 184).
Overall, political polling has changed the way in which we elect our officials throughout American history. It is a process that continues to change and become more efficient and less expensive for candidates to do. Political polling has contributed to greater accuracy of change in America and has provided the American people with a way to truly express their views and opinions on political issues.




Works Cited
Hollihan, Thomas A. Uncivil Wars: politcal Campaigns in the Media Age. 2nd ed. Boston: Bedford/St.Martins, 2009. Print.

Cyprus, Sheri. "What is a straw poll?" Wisegeek. Google, 14 Apr. 2004. Web. 27 Oct. 2009. .

"Polling." Dictionary References. Web. 27 Oct. 2009. .

2 comments:

  1. I agree with your blog that polling has influenced the way we vote and how a campaign will run. Polling can be used for campaigns to gather information on certain issues erupting in our nation. This can be a useful for politicians to find out different issues happening in America. Polling can be a useful to for politicians to see if it is wise to run for an election. It can provide feedback on whether people will vote for a certain candidate and also whether our government is really representing the people. In the 1950's, polling proved be an unfair strategy in gathering information because it was very expensive and only the wealthy campaigns were able to afford them. However, in today's era polling has been a useful and less costly way of providing political engagement. There are different methods of polling that campaigns use within an election. Most use mail and telephone polls within their campaign, but many people find these types of polling annoying because they keep receiving mail and phone calls that mean nothing to them. The new use of polling in this generation is internet. The internet has been a good tactic for campaign polling because it is cheap and they can get feedback from people all over the nation. I agree with you on the fact that polling has influenced voters of America and campaigns in many ways and will do so for the rest of our political future.

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  2. Shawn,
    Good job in your blog giving us insight into the world of political polling, both past and present. It is interesting how polling has evolved over the years, from straw polling to mechanical polling. I agree with you that polling allows citizens to see where issues stand as well as a new way to gain information. Because polling is such an effective tool, it has become essential for campaigns to constantly monitor polls to possibly adjust their approach. It is very important that polls are carefully monitored and are interpreted correctly. In my brief history of polling, I have had the same issues that you have had. I tend to lose interest in some of the lengthy polls and might not give accurate answers. However, this is increasingly becoming a thing of the past with more polls become shorter and available online. Mail polls may provide some feedback and are relatively cheap, but are becoming impractical in today’s technological age. Internet polling allows citizens to conduct polls in their own time at their own rate in the comfort and privacy of their home. Political polls are very important to campaigns and citizens and it is important for voters to stay current with the trends.

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