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‘Electability’ Polls Are Unreliable and Need to Stop
What you should know about the surveys stalking the 2020 election
Kamala Harris faced many challenges in her presidential campaign before ending it this month, including doubts that she was “electable.” She wasn’t alone.
Last month, the news cycle was awash with breathless commentary in the wake of a November 4 New York Times UpShot/Siena College poll, published under this provocative headline: “One Year From Election, Trump Trails Biden but Leads Warren in Battlegrounds.” The poll came out as Warren had been surging in the polls to a position challenging Biden’s front-runner status in the Democratic presidential primary for the first time. Twitter and TV exploded with dire warnings of a Trump second term should Warren, an unabashed “progressive,” become the Democratic Party’s nominee.
The problem with this conclusion is that it’s based on “electability” polls that are unreliable, leading to erroneous narratives that can make or break campaigns, especially for lesser-known candidates who also seek to break through gender or racial glass ceilings like Warren and Harris.
Horserace polling is replete with electability polls because the electability question is central in voters’ minds and, as such, is the type of data heavily prioritized by media outlets. There are significant incentives to produce this type of polling but little scrutiny placed on the practice. Decades of political science scholarship shows that polling helps create narratives that can impact voter behavior, the ability of candidates to raise money, and electability, all of which tie to candidate poll performance in a positive feedback loop. Research shows that voters highly value candidate electability, defined as a candidate’s potential to compete against the opposition party’s nominee, as one of the most important factors driving their vote choice. Even in today’s hyper-ideological environment, two-thirds of likely Democratic primary voters in a FiveThirtyEight/Ipsos survey indicate they’d prefer a candidate who can beat Trump over one who aligns with them on the issues, even immediately following an ideology-priming event such as a debate.
The only candidates for whom head-to-head ballot tests are capable of reliably…
