Lots of reasons not to trust presidential polls

It’s easy to believe a poll that tells you what you want to hear.

Supporters of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden may be feeling too confident, thanks to national and some state polls that show the former vice president ahead.

They shouldn’t believe them. Neither should supporters of President Donald Trump.

The only poll that matters is 28 days away. It will reflect real voters, not just likely ones. If all goes well, the state-by-state tallies will include all votes cast by mail and in person.

There are lots of reasons not to believe polls. They don’t predict the future and only offer a glimpse of what people are thinking on a given day.

Some polls don’t include enough people to give a fair account of a group’s feelings, and others are designed to elicit the views a campaign seeks. Some polls have a high margin of error.

Trinity University associate professor of psychology Harry Wallace offers another reason to be leery of polls: People lie. Such suspicions aren’t new.

In June, the online news site The Hill carried a story with the headline, “Are Trump supporters punking the polls?”

Why would someone lie in a poll? It’s the same reason people lie in general: self-interest. People are concerned about what others think of them, Wallace said.

That may be the case in polls conducted by phone, in which the pollster can hear a person’s response. In more anonymous online polls, Wallace said, voters may be lying only to themselves. He described them as “uncomfortable with one’s personal realities.”

Take the question of whether people see themselves as racists.

“People are much less likely to self-report being racist if there’s any chance they could be tied or identified to that response,” Wallace said.

Even racists don’t want to be seen as racists. I appreciate a white supremacist who admits he’s racist. It’s rather refreshing. It’s the straight-faced liars I distrust.

Polls may also be wrong because “people are bad at introspection,” Wallace said. They don’t know how they really feel about an issue or candidate. What they say in a poll may have no bearing on their decisions at the ballot box.

“It’s easy to pull back the curtain and see that confidence comes in the moment,” he said. “It’s not a reliable marker for their behavior.”

Some people are also “fuzzy,” he said. They’re not thinking deeply about politics. They may think more carefully in the voting booth, but “sometimes people wing it.”

Political strategist Christian Archer, who heads up Bexar Facts Public Opinion Research in San Antonio, agrees wholeheartedly that polls ought to be read “cautiously.”

He chuckles when asked if people lie to pollsters like him.

“For the most part, they’re telling the truth, because it’s anonymous.”

He said polls on specific issues are more on target than those involving individual candidates.

Archer doesn’t pay as much attention to poll results as he does their “cross tabulations, where the meat of the poll is for a campaign.”

For example, the original Pre-K 4 SA campaign showed it wouldn’t pass, he said. But it revealed “a lot of undecided voters and what messages would move them from undecided to supportive.”

“In 2016, a lot of polls got it wrong,” Archer said of the presidential race between Trump and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Undecided conservatives weren’t on anyone’s radar, and Trump got them out.

It’s another strange election cycle in an extra weird 2020. A president still in denial about the coronavirus, including his own diagnosis, has defied every norm.

Meanwhile mail-in ballots are endangered not only by U.S. Postal Service cuts and the potential for manipulation, but also by elected officials like Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, who has limited drop boxes to one per county, no matter the populations of those jurisdictions. Several lawsuits against that move are pending.

While Republicans wail that voting will be fraudulent, Trump has encouraged his supporters to intimidate voters by becoming “poll watchers”; told a potentially violent white supremacist group to “stand by”; and hasn’t committed to abiding by the election results if he loses.

Democrats, on the other hand, are likely more fearful of contracting the coronavirus while voting than Republicans are. The latter, like the president, shun mask-wearing.

Don’t be scared, but take precautions. Be vigilant and no matter how you vote, vote.

Vote early Oct. 13-30. You can vote at any polling location.

On Election Day, Nov. 3, you can vote at any county voting center. If you’ve voted by mail, track the status of your ballot online at bexar.org.

Just do it.