EDITORIAL: ELECTION The polls were wrong again

Nov. 13—The lack of a "red wave" nationally and unexpected DFL victories in Minnesota should be cause for more and more people to be skeptical of polls.

Several national polls were wrong about the red wave, which actually ended up almost being a blue wave. And while statewide polls in Minnesota had Gov. Tim Walz mostly winning, the range of his win was estimated from 18 points to nearly neck and neck in the polls. Other polls suggested Republicans would also likely win the attorney general and state auditor offices.

Polls may be useful or even entertaining for political junkies, but it seems more and more they're not helpful for voters trying to decide on a candidate based on the issues. Voters might do well to pay less attention to polls, and if voters, and readers, pay less attention, perhaps media will see polls are also not valuable to their missions.

Hamline University political analyst David Schultz, writing in MinnPost, makes an argument that media should do fewer polls, and that polls may cause people to simply not vote because the race has already been decided. He argues that media do polls because they make money from them. People pay attention and the audience and advertising dollars grow, he surmises.

That's a bit of stretch in logic, and we know of no media that reports poll revenue on its bottom line. The connection may be tangential at best.

But Schultz's argument that polls have little value to the electorate makes sense, and we agree media should de-emphasize them or at the very least report their flaws. A typical poll margin of error can be 3-4% and if a race is that close, it means either candidate could win. That's not much help.

The 2020 election reportedly had the most polls that were just dead wrong. And in 2016, some polls had Hillary Clinton winning all the way up to the early evening of Election Day.

In terms of the presidential election, Schultz notes that polls judge the popular vote while the election is won or lost with the electoral votes from each state. So in that case, polls are not only useless but also irrelevant.

Voters would do well to study the issues more than they study polls, and media would do well to provide valuable issue-oriented reporting instead of reporting on a horse race that can change minute to minute.