Answer: Public opinion polls are now conducted on every topic under the sun everything from presidential approval to celebrity outfits and sports predictions but they remain especially fundamental to the conduct and study of elections. Elections and polling are so intertwined that it is hard to imagine one without the other. Poll numbers provide fodder for media coverage and election predictions, they shape candidate and voter behavior, and they are the basis of interpreting the meaning of election outcomes. Public Opinion Quarterly was founded in January 1937 on the heels of the advent of modern scientific polling in U.S. presidential elections. The first issue included an essay, “Straw Polls in 1936,” explaining how George Gallup’s quota-controlled survey of a few thousand triumphed over the Literary Digest’s straw poll of millions incorrectly predicting the election outcome.
Election polling has evolved considerably since that inaugural issue. Perhaps most notably, there has been an explosion in the number of election polls in the United States. Traugott (2005) estimated a 900-percent increase in trial heat polls between 1984 and 2000. The number has continued to grow since then, due largely to the rise in interactive-voice-response (IVR) and Internet polls since the 2000 election. In the 2008 election, there were an estimated 975 presidential trial heat questions, and well over a million interviews, conducted between Labor Day and Election Day. It is telling that polling for the next presidential election now begins the day after the previous one. On November 5, 2008, Gallup reported that Sarah Palin led as a potential Republican candidate for the 2012 presidential election.1
There has also been a significant evolution in election polling. For decades, polls were typically conducted by telephone, using live interviewers, on behalf of media organizations or political candidates. Today, Internet surveys and IVR polls are increasingly common, and polls are often initiated by entrepreneurial pollsters conducting them not for a client, but self-promotion (Blumenthal 2005). The dissemination of poll numbers has also changed, with many polls now being reported directly on blogs and polling aggregation websites rather than by the traditional media. Journalists are no longer the formal gatekeepers determining if a given poll is of sufficient quality and interest to warrant the public’s attention.
It also seems that we have seen a rise and fall in the credibility of polling since POQ’s inaugural issue. Reflecting on the Literary Digest prediction disaster in the 1936 election, Crossley’s essay asked, “Is it possible to sample public opinion sufficiently accurately to forecast an election, particularly a close one?”. Crossley argued that it was, provided a representative sample was drawn. Not everyone immediately shared his view, however. It was not until the 1960s and 1970s that surveys became a fixture of political campaigns. Early skepticism that a sample of respondents could say anything about the opinions of millions gave way to a belief in the scientific basis of probability samples. Today, however, nonprobability samples typically opt-in Internet surveys are increasingly common, and probability samples are experiencing significant methodological challenges, such as increasing nonresponse and cell-phone-only households. We now hear near-constant questioning of the motivation and methods of pollsters, often instigated by partisan bloggers and pundits dissatisfied with the results of a poll. There is, once again, a haze of skepticism surrounding the entire industry.
The role of polling in elections has been the subject of numerous books and articles and has been covered with far more detail, richness, and insight than I can provide here. The common thread throughout is that technology has altered the way polls are used by the media, public, candidates, and scholars. And while polls and surveys remain vital to electoral behavior and our understanding of it, they are being increasingly supplemented or replaced by alternate measures and methods.
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