Marketing Analysis

1 Marketing Analysis Shaw and Petrocik (2020) argue that there is no such thing as an authoritative poll.

Even so, a cursory look at the history of national political polls in the USA demonstrates that every election season, American citizens pay significant attention to the polls. Indeed, some voters often decide how they are going to vote based on the polls. In other words, voters typically look to polls for a sense of direction because, on their own, they are unable to predict how an election will go. Therefore, by turning to the professional pollsters, they expect to get an informed view of the election process.

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2 In the last two US elections, however, there have been significant inconsistencies between the polls and the reality (Shaw & Petrocik, 2020). This discrepancy has led to the leveling of serious criticisms against national political polls. Most of those who criticize polls argue that they do not always represent reality and, as such, are not trustworthy. This paper will examine the role of national polls in the USA. In doing so, it will examine whether national political polls always represent reality, the challenges that exist when conducting national polls in today’s environment, and the various ways in which polls can be manipulated.

Understanding of National Political Polls The essence of a poll is that it uses a representative sample to make it possible to gauge public opinion. Usually, a person will survey a relatively small but representative group within a given population and then use that survey's findings to make predictions (Shaw and Petrocik, 2020). Pollsters usually do not need to meet every person to measure national attitudes. Instead, depending on how they design their polls, they can use a representative sample to get a sense of how the broader population thinks. In their duties, pollsters usually use specific probability and statistics principles and base their estimates on a sample or particular selection of voters.

One could argue that one of the essential poll processes is building an accurate representative sample (Singh, Roy, & Fournier, 2016). One way of building an accurate representative sample is by taking a simple random sample in which everyone in the population has an equal chance of being represented. Generally, large representative samples have a higher likelihood of being accurate. Even so, a pollster could work with a sample size of about 1000 people and still manage to deliver a highly accurate poll.

One of the criticisms that continually face pollsters is that they use biased recruiting pollsters methods. Therefore, this means that the poll results will neither be accurate nor a

3 representation of reality. To guard against this danger of bias, pollsters often rely on technology to obtain computer-generated lists of landlines or cellphone numbers (Singh et al., 2016). Even then, pollsters have to pay attention to the fact that some people are more likely than others to participate in polls. To address this possible weakness, pollsters rely on a strategy known as weighting. According to Singh et al. (2016), weighting is a statistical method where weight, race, gender, and educational attainment are given more or less weight in the final analysis. The representative sample can match the demographics of the full population.

It is worth noting that pollsters rarely claim that their claims are entirely accurate. As Singh et al. (2016) argue, the most credible polls will often maintain that there is a margin of error. Therefore, they encourage people who read polls always to understand that aspects such as how questions are asked, the order in which questions are asked, and the honesty levels of interviewees could affect the accuracy of a poll. Therefore, people who read polls should understand that polls are only an indication of what may happen.

Do National Political Polls Always Represent Reality?

As was shown in the previous section, most credible polls often report a margin of error. Therefore, this means that political polls may not always represent reality. They are often a good indication of the reality of the time when the polls in question were conducted.

In arguing that national political polls rarely represent reality, Shaw and Petrocik (2020) offer weighting criticism. These authors suggest that the field is not a complete consensus regarding the factors that should be weighted. For example, if a particular poll happens to have a low proportion of Republicans, does this mean that weighting should be used to correct it? In making such decisions, pollsters may inadvertently push their results. In other cases, pollsters may push results because they do not want to appear as being too far from

4 what other pollsters are reporting. This need to conform may have the overall effect of offering biased findings.

Because pollsters are based on certain time frames, they may miss a reasonable opportunity of understanding shifts in public opinion. One of the critical weaknesses of national politics). They may not necessarily account for changes in opinion as the days go along. Furthermore, they are always retrospective and do not consider how future events may impact national polls. The fact that they are still behind the event may mean that they cannot represent reality accurately.

Challenges in Conducting National Polls As has been seen in the preceding sections, conducting national polls is often beset by several challenges. The first challenge is concerning the honesty levels of the people who are interviewed in the polls. Ultimately, the poll's accuracy is determined by the participants' honesty (Shaw and Petrocik, 2020). When participants do not provide accurate information to pollsters, pollsters will rely on answers that do not represent reality. Such discrepancy will then lead to poll results at variance with a particular population's actual situation at a specific time.

The second challenge faced by national pollsters is that of declining response rates.

As Singh et al. (2016) note in their article, pollsters have to invest more in technologies that will find people interested in participating in the polling process. This problem is further compounded by the fact that there is a shift towards cell phones among the American population. Therefore, it means that pollsters will have to spend more resources on calling potential participants. In the current social and political climate, the strategy of going door-todoor in search of opinions is no longer tenable. Furthermore, the use of cell phones means that there is an increase in mobility rates. This shift means that it is becoming more difficult for pollsters to chart people geographically.

5 How Can National Polls Be Manipulated?

One of the ways national political polls is through the question strategies. Singh et al.

(2016) suggest that how pollsters ask questions could affect how participants answer.

Additionally, the order of questions could also have an impact on the answers people receive.

Therefore, a pollster who wants to influence public opinion could manipulate the polls at the point of gathering answers. There is also the question of choosing interviewers.

In some cases, members of the public do not pay attention to the identity of the people who participate in polls. Therefore, this lack of attention could provide an opportunity for pollsters to manipulate the people they interview so that they can receive certain answers that will then allow them to drive a certain narrative. Pollsters may be able to manufacture opinion this way, mainly when issues are of row rather than broad co Conclusion National political polls are essential in predicting national opinion about particular questions. Indeed, they provide a way of gauging a specific population’s attitude towards specific policies or politicians. Even so, national polls are increasingly coming under attack because they are not always representative of reality. In the USA, national pollsters have not been able to predict national election results accurately. For this reason, they are beginning to suffer reputational damage. To win back the confidence of the American public, national pollsters may have to educate the public on how national polls typically operate.

Furthermore, they should devise strategies for improving their sampling methods and how they analyze American society.

6 References Shaw, D., & Petrocik, J. (2020). The turnout myth: Voting rates and partisan outcomes in American national elections. Oxford University Press, USA. Singh, S. P., Roy, J., & Fournier, P. (2016). Polls, partisanship, and voter decision-making: An experimental analysis. In Voting experiments (pp. 171-189). Springer, Cham.