Poll watching

Digging deep into the numbers

YOU’D THINK that pollsters would have given up. After all, most of them blew it in 2016. We say “them” because we don’t want anybody to remember our predictions. But like Will Rogers said, we only know what we read in the papers. And the papers said Hillary Clinton would win in a walk.

Hard as it is to believe, the national polls weren’t off all that much. She did win several million more votes than Donald Trump.

But she ran up the score in

New York state and California, and lost key states in the midwest by the amount of people that usually show up at a Michigan-Ohio State game. By the rules of the contest, which everybody knew going in, Donald Trump took the oath of office. And pollsters were left stuttering on TV about . . . what we just said above. Trying to explain.

It’s a never-ending game show— polling—in which the hype only increases when the poll gives results you like. Which is why one politician can point to a poll and say one thing, and another can point to another poll and say the opposite. And they can both be telling the truth. Or in layman’s terms, lying. (O’Rourke, P.J.)

Here in Arkansas, there isn’t a lot of polling done. Pennsylvania, we are not. We knew Candidate Trump would win Arkansas in 2016, and President Trump will win it in 2020. But there are two polls/groups that do a great job of revealing the mind of Arkansas voters anyway, and on matters besides the presidential race.

The first is Roby Brock and his crew at Talk Business. When he teams up with pollsters at Hendrix College, you know the data is going to be accurate. The man has years of experience leading polling efforts on candidates and ballot measures.

Then there’s the Arkansas Poll, which shows more of a big picture in Arkansas, one year at a time. It’s run by Dr. Janine Parry, a political science professor at the University of Arkansas. Whereas Mr. Brock seeks to give Arkansans data on one or two current issues at a time, Dr. Parry and her crew work to give a wider scan each year on a number of Arkansas topics.

Politicos in this state can always look forward to Arkansas Poll data being released toward the end of each year. For them, it’s like getting free candy—Halloween treats that reveal how voters have changed over the previous year.

The 2020 data was released Wednesday and shows some interesting things: Primarily, the majority of Arkansans support Issue 1 (a permanent road tax) and Issue 2 (changing term limits for lawmakers so they can serve for longer periods of time, with breaks between terms). But the majority also disapproves of Issue 3 (tightening restrictions for ballot measures).

Some items in the poll aren’t surprises. Arkansans still have high approval ratings for Asa Hutchinson and Tom Cotton. The number of people favoring stricter abortion laws increased, as did the number of folks who identified as Republicans.

What does surprise is that the number of folks who believe climate change will pose a serious threat in their lifetimes increased from 31 percent in 2019 to 37 percent this year. People must have noticed the wildfires out west and the hurricanes down south.

Perhaps the biggest number we saw on the poll was 77 percent. That’s the number of Arkansans who feel Arkansas is heading in the right direction. That’s an increase from the previous year—of six points!

That speaks to the spirit of Arkansans. Through the pandemic, through a tumultuous election year, through everything 2020 has thrown at us, Arkansans somehow find a way to not just remain optimistic but grow even more so. What a state.

The country will have a vaccine sometime in the next months, and doctors are getting better at treating covid-19 every day. We’re going to beat this pandemic and get the state’s economy back on track. Arkansans are a hardy and stubborn breed. This poll proves it.

As much as any poll can prove anything.