HarryShearer.com

The media spent a bit of time today pointing out that, in the now-customary parlance, “the polls had it wrong”. In this case, it was the surveys regarding public sentiment in Michigan’s Dem Senate Primary. Yet, in all the discussion about the actual results of the race, and their possible effect on the final election this November, the failure of the public-opinion industry had faded well into the background. As usual.

Politicians, and their consultants, need some kind of guidance as to how, and where, to spend their campaign funds. Maybe some polling, the kind we never see, helps them. That’s a lot more than we can say about the value of these incessant surveys in the public media. Unless you’re a Kalshi bettor, what any given poll—or even a “poll of polls”—says about the current state of an electoral contest some time in the future is worth nothing to you, except as the most insipid substitute for actual journalism.

You remember journalism. Ask your dad.

Aside from the polling companies themselves, this activity is useful mainly to media that have, and continue to, cut their budgets for actual reporting. Having some loudmouth go on about polls (and, now that we’re savvy, the “internals”) for three or four minutes is much cheaper than sending someone smart to observe something important and report back to us.

In what other business would a consensus of error like the Michigan polls not result in some policy change? Or, more likely these days, in a round of layoffs.

Sixty-seven percent of the 468 Substackers polled on this article agree with its premise, with a + or - 3 percent margin of error. But that figure is sure to change when we hire more pollsters.