Survey Says
The Baffler is pleased to present a panel discussion on the uses and abuses of political polling ahead of the 2024 presidential election.
The birth of modern election polling is usually dated to the 1936 presidential race between Franklin D. Roosevelt and Alf Landon. The results of the country’s largest straw poll, conducted by the Literary Digest, were publicly challenged by a trio of upstarts—including George Gallup—who claimed their own methods, like canvassing representative segments of the electorate, were more scientific. The Literary Digest poll was indeed dramatically wrong, kicking off Gallup’s vertiginous rise. Though he was dubbed the “Babe Ruth of the polling profession” in the 1940s, the industry has expanded so dramatically that the company Gallup founded now ranks thirty-fifth on 538’s list of the best pollsters in America.
But even as polling cemented its place as a fixture of elections and campaigns, pollsters have been repeatedly humbled by bad forecasts, from the failure to predict Harry Truman’s victory in 1948, to widespread confidence that Hillary Clinton would defeat Donald Trump in 2016, to overestimations of Biden’s lead in 2020. As voters prepare to cast their ballots once again, it’s time to take stock of what polls can and can’t tell us about American politics.
In a conversation moderated by Chris Lehmann, Osita Nwanevu, Katherine Krimmel, and Dan Bouk will discuss the history, present, and future of political polling; its effect on the democratic process; and how public opinion can or should shape party platforms.
Dan Bouk researches the history of bureaucracies, quantification, and other modern things shrouded in cloaks of boringness. His most recent book, Democracy’s Data: The Hidden Stories in the US Census and How to Read Them, was published by MCD/Farrar, Straus and Giroux. He teaches history at Colgate University.
Katherine Krimmel is an assistant professor in the department of political science at Barnard College, Columbia University. Her book, Divergent Democracy: How Policy Positions Came to Dominate Party Competition, was published by Princeton University Press earlier this year.
Chris Lehmann (moderator) is the editor at large of The Baffler and the DC bureau chief for The Nation. He’s the former editor of The Baffler and The New Republic, and author of The Money Cult: Capitalism, Christianity, and the Unmaking of the American Dream.
Osita Nwanevu is a contributing editor at The New Republic and a columnist at The Guardian. His first book, The Right of the People: Democracy and the Case for a New American Founding, will be published by Random House next year.