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Mistaking precision for reality.

Article Excerpt
Noting that dozens of organizations conducted numerous opinion surveys prior to the elections last November, The Wall Street Journal's November 21 online edition posted tabulations and graphs comparing the past two months of polls and outcomes in various Senate races. At the most casual glance, the polls' generally weak predictive power was patently obvious. Even where the correct winner was selected, the vote margins were way off. In November 2006, pundits and poll readers generally predicted Democrats might take over the house, though no one predicted a victory by the numbers revealed when people actually voted, and many doubted the possibility of a Democratic majority in the Senate. As polls opened in 2004, these same people predicted that John Kerry would win. In 2000, they foresaw a popular landslide for George Bush.

Despite past failures and ignoring current research errors, public opinion polls continue to generate the primary basis for political news, with all major news organizations spending increasing amounts of money to collect data. The numbers so overwhelm the news that people might perceive the polls as correct and the vote results as the errors. As a guest on Chris Matthews' MSNBC program "Hardball" in October 2006, comedian Robin Williams promoted his new movie in which a talk show host runs for president. With his expertise of having played a politician in a movie, the entertainer accused the U.S. voting system as being either fraud-filled or riddled with bias, with his "proof" of such an assertion that polls failed to predict elections. His statement was unchallenged by the show's journalist host or the roomful of college students of which some (we hope) studied...