The jury has returned a true verdict: The press and the pundits, which forecast a gaudy red wave, got it horribly, terribly, magnificently wrong. …
Instead of establishing a Bureau of Shame, a wiser use of our time would be to convince editors that the election-prediction industrial complex’s skills at predicting the future are somewhere between null and slight, and that they should confiscate the predicters’ keyboards if they insist on calling the future before it arrives. …
By overvaluing predictive journalism, voters and the press end up undervaluing the more difficult to assemble coverage of candidates’ positions and their strengths. This is not to say that reporters or pundits should ignore polls or that horserace coverage should be abandoned. When conducted with rigor — and when presented with provisos that detail their shortcomings — polls can give voters and candidates useful sketches of what voters are thinking. CONTINUED
Jack Shafer, Politico Magazine
The OPINION TODAY email newsletter is a concise daily rundown of significant new poll results and insightful analysis. It’s FREE. Sign up here: opiniontoday.substack