What's the matter with the polls?

The run-up to Election Day might be exposing key flaws in public polling.

Campaign professionals are pinpointing flaws in the public polling conducted by news organizations and academic institutions.



Rubén Weinsteiner

In the final days of the presidential race, the public polling has settled into a mostly consistent equilibrium: Hillary Clinton leads Donald Trump both nationally and in most key states, but by a narrower margin than last month, and not by enough to be assured of victory next week.

It’s been a bumpy road to that consensus, however, one marked by wildly careening results in recent days. Campaign professionals say the run-up to the election is exposing key flaws in the public polling conducted by news organizations and academic institutions.

The most obvious flaw is that the polls are overstating sudden fluctuations to the American people, say campaign pollsters whose own data is far more stable — even amid news events that rival the most creative political fiction.

“One of the reasons that I know the polling doesn’t move this much,” said Democratic pollster Nick Gourevitch, “is because any time we do a project internally using many, many interviews — the polling doesn’t move this much.”

It's not a new phenomenon: After the 2012 election, President Barack Obama's campaign bragged about its internal polling, which was far more stable relative to public polling.

While the public polls are almost uniformly more volatile than private data, the ABC News/Washington Post tracking poll — which over the past two weeks resembles a seismograph during a magnitude-8 earthquake — is taking it to another level.

Rubén Weinsteiner