Review by Booklist Review
As we enter another election cycle, polls and pollsters are once again dominating news cycles as we seek to understand where the electorate is heading. Often, polls seem to be able to accurately predict results, as in 2020, with the predicted victory of Joe Biden. But sometimes, they're way off the mark, as in 2016, with the predicted victory of Hillary Clinton. This may lead some to conclude that the predictive power of polls is unreliable, at best. Here, Morris posits that, while the science behind polls is valid, it is our understanding of the information to be gleaned from polls that is sometimes flawed. Morris suggests that the science of reading and understanding the information provided by polls is as subtle and complicated as the science of conducting polls. He takes us through an extensive analysis of the history and science of polling, and offers ways of better understanding what polls actually tell us, beyond just predicting who is likely to win the next election. Anything that helps voters navigate the onslaught of information in an electoral season is welcome, indeed.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Economist journalist Morris debuts with a detailed rundown of how public opinion polling has evolved from ancient Greece to the present day and why it is essential for democratic societies. Contending that polls "shape the government's understanding of what the people want from their leaders," Morris traces the concept that public opinion, or the "general will," should guide the processes of lawmaking and governing to Enlightenment philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau and notes that the first published straw polls appeared during the 1824 U.S. presidential election. Elsewhere, Morris recounts how George Gallup's efforts to better measure the interests of newspaper readers helped make him "the father of modern public opinion surveys" in the 20th century; explains the numerous factors that contribute to inaccurate polls, including sampling errors, refusals by certain types of respondents to participate, and imprecise or biased questions; and describes how polls can be used to manipulate public opinion. Though Morris's discussions of technical matters, including the "raking" algorithm pollsters use to determine whether their surveys are representative, can be heavy going, he makes a persuasive case for the necessity of polling and the need to better educate the public about how it works. Political junkies and policy analysts will savor this informative deep dive. (July)
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Review by Library Journal Review
American journalist Morris, a writer for the Economist, analyzes public opinion polls and pollsters, maintaining that they more reliably report trends, similar to weather forecasts, than provide unassailable predictions. He dissuades readers from dismissing polls and faults researchers for overemphasizing the easily accessible views of highly educated people. The increased use of multi-day voting, when not all citizens react to the same recent events, and the tendency for less enthusiastic constituents to forgo optional balloting further skew surveys' veracity. Polling persists because it apprises officeholders of popular causes. The horse race nature arguably excites both pundits and the populace. Librarians should note that there are few recent comprehensive print monographs on polling; statistician Nate Silver (The Signal and the Noise) and others usually prefer blogs and websites. VERDICT This book's lucid language explains techniques such as manipulative push and unofficial straw polls, while setting the topic in its historical context.--Frederick J. Augustyn Jr.
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
A data journalist for the Economist explains his much-derided and now much-distrusted profession. In the 2020 presidential election, a poll taken by ABC News and the Washington Post projected that Joe Biden would defeat Donald Trump in Wisconsin by a towering 17 percentage points. Ultimately, Biden's lead was less than 1 point. How did the pollsters get it so wrong? In 2016, how did everyone who called the election for Hillary Clinton misread the signs? Morris looks deep inside the often flawed assumptions of the pollsters and efforts to overcome the mathematical flaws inherent in their surveys, from sample bias to margins of error. Before doing so, however, he defends the use of polls as an important mechanism to give voice to voters in a representative democracy. "We must understand that both the concept and the significance of public opinion took root gradually, and their development continues to this day," he writes. When properly conducted, he adds, a poll can have the force of a referendum, given that a key assumption of democracies is that the voice of the collective is stronger than that of the individual. But how to assemble that collective to give meaningful results? As Morris notes, some of the problem lies on the side of the pollsters, who must attain samples sufficiently large and diverse to represent as many demographics as possible. Some, though, lies on the side of those being polled, who, it seems, tend not to answer truthfully, especially when they suspect that the poll is biased toward one end or another. In the 2020 election, right-leaning voters tended not to respond to polls at all, again leading to projections of a Biden landslide. Those readers with a bent for statistics will take interest in the author's descriptions of such matters as sampling errors, the law of large numbers, and the corrective tools of smoothing and aggregation. Morris makes a solid case for polls as tools to give voice to the people while allowing that improvements are needed. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
