Bias in Presidential Polls and other Election Year Polling

1. Are you concerned that gas prices could rise astronomically in the next few years?
2. Are you aware that some have made the prediction that gas prices could rise 50% in the next 5 years
3. Are you in favor of drilling for oil off theU.S. coast

Scenario Two: A political polling company decides to poll only landlines and only at dinnertime, and if no one answers they move on to the next home.

Scenario Three: A political poll is based on a certain state having 60% democrats and 40% republicans, while most other polls have the state at 50-50 democrats to republicans.

Unfortunately all three of these scenarios are not far fetched in the political polling done during election seasons. While most polling companies do adhere strictly to high standards when it comes to removing all sources of bias, some do not. Thus, some election polls are seriously flawed as in these examples. In the first case the respondent to the poll might be biased by the first two questions in order to answer yes to the third. In the second case the polling company may be over-sampling single and older respondents because young voters
use cell phones predominantly, and many families do not answer the phone during dinnertime. The third scenario would create an obvious bias on all questions toward the political party that is overrepresented.

The best way that an informed voter can learn which election polls might be biased is to make sure that you follow more than one polling company at the start of each election season. The more polls you get to know the better informed you may be. Since the majority of political polling companies are unbiased in their approach, look for and eliminate outliers that seem to favor one party or the other. Dig deeper than just looking at the results (again, at least while you are initially choosing which polls you trust), and see how questions were worded and how the demographics of respondents are chosen. Also look into the background of the leader of the poll itself. Does he or she or the larger group have a political lean?

Polling results in the media and on the web are extremely popular as people are very interested to know what the prospects are for their own selected candidate or political party, and they can also sway voters who are undecided about an issue or candidate. Unfortunately some polling companies are biased, whether unintentionally - it may be easier and cheaper to employ some technologies that inadvertently eliminate some demographics - or intentionally in order to sway opinion and/or gain favor from certain news outlets and social media.

For more information about bias and hidden agendas in our political system, please see:

Our blog about secret loyalties: Foxes in The Henhouse

Our blog dedicated to ensuring that bias is brought into the open and that the
middle ground gets fair coverage: Excluded Middle