Political Polling and the New Media Culture: A Case of More Being Less

Changes in journalism—including newsroom cutbacks, an emphasis on repackaging secondhand material, and the demands of 24-hour news—have expanded the reliance on polls as news, including polls of a sort once considered not reliable for publication, and led to a more superficial understanding of the 2004 presidential race. The proliferation of outlets offering news, which has resulted in greater competition for audience, has also intensified the motivation of using polls in part for their marketing value rather than purely their probative journalistic value. The more “synthetic” style of contemporary journalism has increased the tendency to allow polls to create a context for journalists to explain and organize other news—becoming the lens through which reporters see and order a more interpretative news environment. A greater dependence on horse race tracking polls by the media has reinforced these tendencies and further thinned the public’s understanding toward who won and away from why. Growing audience skepticism and political polarization have created an environment of distrust about the methodology and integrity of polling. All of these factors, in turn, are frustrating the efforts of academic and commercial pollsters to maintain standards and deepen understanding among journalists about public opinion research and how to use it as journalism.