In the final weeks before the midterms, there’s a poll for just about everyone. One may show a candidate pulling ahead in a state that’s supposed to be hostile territory for their party. Another gives one of the parties a historic lead on the generic ballot. Whatever you’re hoping for on Election Day, you can probably find a poll that says it’s coming.
That doesn’t make it a good poll. Some of the most rigorous surveys out there may tell you exactly what you don’t want to hear, and even the best are not crystal balls. They are loaded with nuance, measure opinion at a single moment and carry uncertainty that’s easy to overlook in a fast-moving news cycle.
But polling is still a critical tool for understanding which races are competitive and which issues voters care about. The trick is reading them well. Here are three things worth considering to help you separate out meaningful patterns in the data from noise.
Polls are snapshots, not predictions
A poll can show which candidate leads a race when the interviews were conducted, but it cannot say for sure how people will vote days or weeks later. Campaigns are dynamic. Candidates’ positions evolve. Voters change their minds. In races where polls show many undecided voters, these shifts add another layer of uncertainty, because many of those voters will eventually pick someone. So pay attention to the share of respondents who are unsure or only leaning toward a candidate.
And like any snapshot, even the best poll is imperfect. High-quality pollsters work hard to make sure the people they interview accurately represent the voters in a state or district, but even excellent polls contain some noise. Smaller surveys typically have greater margins of error than larger ones. Results for specific demographic groups can be even less certain, since a survey may include only a small number of people from those groups.
Polls can offer a valuable snapshot of an election story as it unfolds. What they cannot do is predict with certainty how that story ends.
Not all polls are created equal
When most people come across a poll in a news story, the first thing they look at is the topline number: What is the poll telling me? But a better place to start is often with the source.
Who conducted the poll? How did they do it? What questions were respondents asked? Did the pollster release a methodology accounting for their decisions, or did they keep those details out of view?
These questions are important because how a pollster conducts a poll inevitably shapes what conclusions it — and, in turn, you — can draw from it. Most pollsters are well intentioned and have every incentive to get the numbers right, and reputable ones are transparent about their methods. They also generally don’t have a stake in the outcome or an incentive to try to shape the narrative around a race — unlike, say, a campaign releasing its own internal polling.
The lesson is simple. When a new poll comes out, look beyond the topline and spend a little time investigating how it was conducted. And never judge a poll’s quality by what it finds.
Polling contains unavoidable uncertainty
A common misconception with polling is that all differences are real and meaningful. For instance, in a poll of a congressional race that is 50% to 46%, it may be tempting to look at the candidate polling at 50% as the frontrunner and the one likely to win if nothing about the race changes.
But that is the wrong way to read most polls that show narrow gaps between candidates. Every poll contains some amount of uncertainty. That does not mean polling is broken, or that getting an accurate gauge on public opinion is impossible; it means that any single poll should be taken with caution and considered alongside other polls on the same race or issue.
One of the most common forms of uncertainty you will come across is a poll’s margin of error, which stems from the fact that a poll surveys only a sample of voters. In a 50-46 race with a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points, we can’t say for sure who would be ahead if every voter were surveyed, because the final result could be anything from a 53-43 race one way to a 47-49 race the other way.
And sampling error is just one of many challenges. Error can creep into a poll in many other ways, including how pollsters determine who is likely to vote and how they weight different groups to match the population they’re trying to measure.
That’s why context matters — a lot. Polling averages can be an excellent way of setting expectations when a new poll comes out and to avoid getting swept up in the hype around an outlier. Polls from reputable news organizations with strong track records can serve the same purpose.
And when two candidates are polling neck and neck, the best conclusion is often the most obvious one: If the election were held today, it could go either way.
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