Following a series of embarrassing misses, including failures to accurately predict the outcomes of the Brexit vote, a Colombian referendum on peace negotiations, and the 2016 U.S. presidential
election, pollsters are on the defensive.
Now the crisis of credibility is beginning to have a real impact. This weekend, a leading French newspaper revealed it will not be publishing poll results
for the country’s upcoming elections.
Stephane Albouy, the editor-in-chief of Le Parisien, told France Inter radio the newspaper will stop commissioning its own polls, although
it may still reference the results of other polls in the lead-up to France’s 2017 presidential election, according to Agence France Press, which republished parts of the interview.
Albouy
portrayed the move as an attempt to re-position the newspaper with more first-hand reporting: “We have decided, and it was the subject of a lot of debate, to return to the heart of our
profession which is working on the ground.”
However, it’s not hard to interpret the subtext of the statement. In addition to being relatively abstract, political polls are
increasingly wrong, and publishing poll results merely serves to mislead readers.
Even more damning is the implication that journalists, while largely untrained in statistical science, can
still do a better job getting a sense for the overall political mood— even if, in large part, it is through anecdotal reporting.
In addition to the high-profile failures noted above,
political polls also missed the outcome of the conservative Republican presidential primary in France, which gave the candidacy to Francois Fillon in a surprise result in November.
As noted
previously, in the final days leading up to the 2016 U.S. presidential election, multiple polls had Hillary Clinton leading Donald Trump in key swing states, including Florida, Ohio, North Carolina
and Pennsylvania, not to mention supposedly safe Democratic states, like Michigan and Wisconsin.
Despite razor-thin margins, all voted for Trump.