I agree with Ed Kilgore that we cannot cover politics well if we simply ignore polls, and there’s a good debate to be had about how best to aggregate polls. But Kilgore ignored the subject that most interests me. And that is the likelihood that Gallup and (particularly) Rasmussen polls were deliberately favorable to Mitt Romney in the last polling cycle, and what that did to benefit both Romney and Republicans in general.
Candidates operate within a larger nebulous media environment that they can influence but not control. It is easier to function as a candidate in an environment in which you are not being told day after day that the polls show that you have no more than a 33% chance of winning. That was what Nate Silver’s aggregator consistently showed almost all last year, and he still overestimated Romney’s final standing because all the pollsters (but especially Gallup and Rasmussen) were off.
Other aggregators that did not correct for house effect were much worse and more commonly used on television and in print. The effect was to create a false impression that the race was closer than it was, which (on the whole) was beneficial to Romney.
An argument can be made that this false impression created an unwarranted complacency on Romney’s part, preventing him from taking big chances that could have turned the race. Yet, frankly, understanding the role of simple denial in the Romney campaign is a separate topic from how we should interpret polls and poll aggregations in the future. Romney’s in-house pollster may have been the worst of all, and we can’t really know why they were delivering such rose-tinted news to their boss.
In general, closer-than-reality polling was beneficial for Romney. In addition to contributing to an easier media environment, it helped him continue to rake in money until the very end of the campaign.
For media outlets who were more focused on getting eyeballs than getting it right, closer-than-reality polls were helpful because they made the campaign seem more interesting and newsworthy.
So, there are a lot of issues surrounding polling beyond just explaining why the pollsters underestimated Obama’s lead.
