Home / World News / US elections 2020: Why Americans are so enamoured with opinion polls

US elections 2020: Why Americans are so enamoured with opinion polls

While it is possible the polls will misfire, it's exceedingly unlikely that such failure would cause the opinion research industry to implode or wither away

Premium

Photo: Shutterstock

6 min read Last Updated : Oct 30 2020 | 6:40 AM IST

The Republican pollster Frank Luntz warned on Twitter and elsewhere the other day that if preelection polls in this year’s presidential race are embarrassingly wrong again, “then the polling industry is done.”

It was quite the forecast.

While it is possible the polls will misfire, it’s exceedingly unlikely that such failure would cause the opinion research industry to implode or wither away. One reason is that election polls represent a sliver of a well-established, multibillion-dollar industry that conducts innumerable surveys on policy issues, consumer product preferences and other nonelection topics.

If opinion research were

What you get on BS Premium?

Unlock 30+ premium stories daily hand-picked by our editors, across devices on browser and app.
Pick your 5 favourite companies, get a daily email with all news updates on them.
Full access to our intuitive epaper - clip, save, share articles from any device; newspaper archives from 2006.
Preferential invites to Business Standard events.
Curated newsletters on markets, personal finance, policy & politics, start-ups, technology, and more.

VIEW ALL FAQs

Need More Information - write to us at assist@bsmail.in