The cake is a lie, and so are your polls! This election cycle, the media has suffered not one but two polling fiascos. The first was Median Strategies. The second, more recent one was Wedgewood Polls.
Just to review for those who are not up on the situation, here’s the DL:
Median Strategies was exposed in August for sharing fake election polling in Wisconsin, Nevada, and California. It was run by a 21-year-old college grad who told the Guardian, “I wanted to see if fake polls could really penetrate the ecosystem that easily, and as it turned out, it could.”
His fake polls were picked up by a few local outlets and lasted only a short time, but nothing crazy. This is not as bad as our more recent polling fiasco.
The Wedgewood Polls Fiasco
Wedgewood Polls popped up earlier this year, releasing wild polls, such as one showing deep-red Mississippi going hard blue. They also may have played a hand in the Democratic primary in Michigan, where Abdul El-Sayed beat out state Sen. Mallory McMorrow. The outlet and Substack Fifty Plus One questioned and then exposed Wedgewood Polls this week.
Nearly every outlet, from MS NOW to The New York Times, Newsweek and Breitbart, was using Wedgewood Polls. Newsweek retracted three articles, The New York Times has removed them from its interactive poll tracker, and somehow everyone is shocked they got duped.
Do you know who’s not shocked about duping the media? Wedgewood Polls. In a statement released on X (their account is no longer accessible), they said they were conducting an “experimental project to demonstrate the vulnerabilities, lack of oversight, and overall low barrier to entry in the modern political polling industry.”
Polling and the Herd Mentality
Welp, shame on us, the media. They certainly exposed more than just a low barrier to entering the industry, but let’s get back to the crux of all of this. There is something to be said for polling data creating a “herd mentality” (here’s a piece I wrote on herd mentality a few years ago). Last year’s piece may have been about vaccinations, but the same ideas and sentiments apply here.
Polls can sway undecided voters because they go with the crowd or the trend, or because it allows them to feel like they fit in.
What was once used to take the temperature of a county, state or country can be manipulated before you even see it — because remember, the numbers don’t lie, but statisticians do.
Journalistic Do’s and Don’ts with Polling Data
Polling data matters more than journalists often realize, and this week’s Wedgewood Polls scandal is just another reason I hate most polling and statistics. Now, don’t get me wrong: I’ve used polling in my reporting and columns, so I completely understand the rare need for this data. Here is how real news organizations should, and should not, use it in their reporting.
- Do not create a story solely around one poll. If you (or your editor) pitch a story idea because of new polling, throw it out the window and don’t look back. It is not a story; it is propaganda. If 2016 can teach journalists anything, it’s that even legitimate polling outlets can miss the mark by more than twice their calculated margin of error. You want to know why polls can be so wrong? It’s because they are made by humans — and we all are flawed in some way.
- Do use multiple polls from two politically different outlets in the same story. If you are doing a story on how Americans think Trump is doing in office, you need to use a New York Times poll (left) and a Rasmussen poll (right). Almost no one does this, but this is exactly how you stay neutral as a journalist.
Using Polls Without Pushing an Agenda
- Do not use polling to enforce your or your outlet’s political ideology (both Newsmax and MS Now do this often). I cannot tell you how many times I was asked to write the following copy during my TV producing tenure:
[ANC]
Take a look at the latest Rasmussen poll…
[Take Poll RS1]
Then the anchor tosses to the pundits, who are like, “Yeah, whoo, way to go, GOP.” It’s boring TV; it’s used to fill time on a regular news day and, most importantly, it’s herd mentality.
- Do use polls to challenge what your guests are saying. If you have a Republican governor on, use a CNN or New York Times poll. Vice versa for Democrats. I think this is lazy journalism and a waste of a question, but if you want (or are mandated) to include a poll, at least make it a little spicy, a little salty, whatever sass you want to put in there. Just be mindful that you can add this in a better way than with just a poll.
The Final Word on Polls
Here’s the deal: I’m going to tell you my bias right now. I hate polls. They need to go away forever. I find they are flawed, often used in a manipulative way and never well presented (with the exception of CNN’s Harry Enten; he’s the only person who should ever be talking about polls).
A poll should not be your headline, the base of a story or the reason people vote. This election cycle is teaching the media a lot, from AI manipulating American voters (and our not catching it; see last month’s piece) to polls manipulating American voters (and us, the media, not catching it). Either way, we as journalists take an oath of truth, fairness, independence and public service. We are so vital to the success of the nation that the First Amendment protects us.
For all these reasons, you should be throwing out the polls and instead doing real leather-shoe journalism, like, I don’t know… voter fraud or the fraudulent daycare centers. Pick something, because both sides of the political aisle are complicit, and if all we do is write a half-baked story about the latest polling data, we are just as complicit.
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