Polls and preliminary vote counts

By: izzy, keller, and josh

Izzy: On election morning, 538 published their final election prediction giving Biden an 89% chance of winning. As of now, it seems clear that this prediction came true. On Saturday, Biden was declared by most news outlets the winner of the 2020 election though a final tally of votes may still be a long way off due to recounts. Still, Biden's incredibly tight win over Trump doesn't seem reflected by the polls which gave him such a large chance of winning. Why was there such a large discrepancy between most poll predictions and the results of the election? Furthermore, why weren't we able to make adjustments to polling after the failures in polling from 2016?

It is important to acknowledge that there is always a margin of error in polling. Although polling has become more widespread in past years the methods of polling have become more complicated than in the past when most people were reachable on landlines. The challenges facing pollsters was evident in the 2016 election where polls significantly underestimated President Trump's appeal, giving Hillarly Clinton a nearly 90% chance of winning.

Knowledge of this failure of polling in the 2016 election certainly informed polling in this election. Major media outlets like the New York Times, for instance, shied away from publishing and displaying election predictions. Learning from past mistakes, the Times didn't even display an updating election meter like they did for the 2016 presidential election, citing a choice to be more responsible with the data. Moreover, media like 538 accounted for polling error, urging readers to have patience while waiting for definitive results about the election to come in before declaring either candidate the victor.

Even with all these precautions in place, the fundamental mission of polls to provide a level of confidence and certainty in the results of the election was not achieved. Frantically refreshing my election results page in the middle of the night, I had little certainty in a Biden win. Once again the polls significantly overestimated the Democrats appeal and underestimated Trump.

I think the essential problem is that we want polling to be simpler and more accurate than it actually is. Elections are incredibly nuanced with a propensity to large shifts and alterations at a moments notice. Perhaps providing readers with a single magical number derived from the cloud of immense polling data is not the best way to signal to voters the complexity of elections and their results. Going forward, it is possible that there may be a better way to indicate the results of the election without oversimplifying it into a one number tells all situation.

Keller: After a declared announcement of Bidens win throughout a final count of votes this past weekend, Trump has questioned the validity of this win and has declared that some of the swing states such as Georgia, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Arizona, Wisconsin and Michigan, recount their votes. Trump's lawsuits and questioning of voter fraud raises the suspicion on if Trump will continue with a smooth transition of power if the recounts prove validity in Bidens favor?

In states such as Michigan trump has retweeted statements that emphasize his view of the election being fraudulent. The tweet implies that Biden’s votes had grown from 1,992,356 votes in Michigan to 2,130,695 votes while Trump’s remained constant at 2,200,902 votes. This was later proven by the Decision Desk election map to be in a glitch in the system that has occurred before and was corrected once brought to light. The impact of Trump's tweet reached many. An article by Vox that describes the Michigan vote counting states, “Trump’s post had been “Liked” more than 129,000 times and shared more than 59,000 times by Wednesday afternoon. The same misleading narrative is also showing up on Facebook, and only some of the posts carry a label directing people to election information.” It’s important to acknowledge the impact of discrediting the voter calculations and brings into question what the transition of power will look like if Trump disagrees with the election results?

Throughout the course of the election, many were left waiting on the swing states to provide an answer as to who would be the next President. After seeing the election results declared and being revisited due to lawsuits by Trump, it puts the system into question. If the votes are proven credible by states and Trump proceeds to see the votes as fraudulent, what are the next steps? When a president is declared, the American people should be granted with the assurance that the person will remain well into inauguration. There should not be uncertainty about the leadership of America.


Josh: For this phase of the project, I decided to track the New York Times because I thought they would have an interesting take before and after the results came out. The three articles I dove into were all predicted outcomes after the election where the losing side claimed that the election wasn’t legitimate. This year is so different because of the amount of mail-in ballots that had to be counted which caused a significant delay. However, just days after media outlets braced us for a possible weeks wait before the election could be called they declared Joe Biden the winner. While this could have been a legitimate decision in any other year, the media should not have set the American public off right away before states have made their final counts due to the close margins and pending the Trump lawsuits in multiple battleground states. My first critique of the Times is going along with other major outlets and declaring one of the candidates the winner so quickly. They basically did what they said they wouldn’t do.

Secondly, when it comes to the Trump lawsuits and voter fraud, I believe that the New York Times isn’t covering this correctly. I fundamentally disagree with the claim that an election can’t be interfered with "“because of the number of people tuned in.” What about Russia in 2016? Russia became a significant talking point for the New York Times over the last four years which displays their hypocrisy. While there isn’t any sufficient evidence of voter fraud that would alter the results of the election as of now, the media should not misinform the American people by telling them that the election is now over because it is far from it. There are still recounts and further investigations to be done. Over the last few days, I have pondered what will happen if the results are actually overturned. While I don’t see this as a likely outcome, it would create more distrust in the media which contributes to the party polarization.