For decades, I’ve watched weather forecasts on TV and recited the old cliche that “oh, it must be great to be in a profession where you get paid for being wrong half the time.”
Well, if the weather forecaster is wrong half the time, he/she has nothing on that bastion of political prognostication: the pollster.
How would you like to work for one of those high-visibility pollsters today? How would you like to be going into your boss’ office to explain how you had ahead Joe Biden up by nine points, or that you had predicted a “Blue Wall” or you had talked about a mass repudiation for all things Donald Trump.
None of that happened, of course.
Whatever comes out of this election, the reputation of the polling outfits is just shot. They are useless.
Those of us who aren’t exactly fans of Trump (guilty!) are permanently scarred after 2016, when we were assured Hillary Clinton was going to win the election and become the first-ever woman to be president. The pollsters and the prognosticators drew maps outlining the “path to the presidency.” Hillary’s was as wide as Times Square in New York. Trump’s was as narrow as the little openings in the brush that lead you to the sand on Nahant Beach.
I’m not the trusting type in that I was sure James Comey’s messing with the whole email thing at the last minute was going to kill her — and of course it did (among other things).
Four years later, they were at it again. Biden had the big lead. He had a zillion paths to 270 and Trump had about two. There were all these states Trump just absolutely had to have and there was no way he was going to win them all. Florida. Georgia. Texas. Ohio. North Carolina.
Guess what? He won four and the fifth is in red and white stripes.
These people do not know what they’re talking about, apparently. When they get in front of a camera, they’re just winging it. I’d love the honesty of one of these clowns saying “you know what? I have no idea. We call people. They tell us. But don’t know whether they’re lying.”
Well, assume they are. Especially if you’re talking about a guy like Trump, who feels that your portfolio outweighs all the abject cruelty that spews out of his mouth.
Some of us don’t see the world that way, and these people know it. So they lie. Or they say “I’m undecided,” which is a laugh. How could you possibly be undecided in an election involving these two?
Oh, but what about the way these pollsters can press a few buttons on the computer and get your life story. You can say you’re voting for the liberal, but your profile says you own a pickup truck and a gun rack and — for all anyone knows — you wear a red tie that you trip over when you walk down the street. This indicates that you’re not exactly being truthful.
I guess that’s a myth. It’s still the same old crap shoot. Sometimes you roll a seven. Sometimes you roll snake-eyes. And you never know what’s going to happen once you get those dice in your hands.
So naturally, like any intelligent person, I woke up Tuesday morning, petrified, because of how scarred I was from 2016. I really tried to put all that stuff out of my mind. But it’s impossible for it not to seep in. These people know more than I do. They do this for a living.
Well, I do what I do for a living too, and accuracy is a huge part of it. I don’t need to be wrong.
And neither do they. When they blow it this badly it creates more stress than we already have.
Tuesday night was a nightmare. All the states that had blue stripes were turning red and I was thinking “darn it all, Trump’s going to win.” I drove my colleagues nuts, and one of them threatened to beat me up.
When I got home, the first words out of my mouth were “I can’t believe that so-and-so is going to win again.”
Says she, “oh, no, not you, too. I had Andrew (our son) in my ear all night. He had his phone out, and he was adding numbers … “
I smiled. It was the first happy thought I’d had all night. A kindred spirit right under my nose.
Who knew?
