PERSPECTIVE FROM THE 19TH HOLE:  This is the title I chose for my personal blog, which is meant to give me an outlet for one of my favorite crafts – writing – plus to use an image from my favorite sport, golf.  Out of college, my first job was as a reporter for the Daily Astorian in Astoria, Oregon, and I went on from there to practice writing in all of my professional positions, including as press secretary in Washington, D.C. for a Democrat Congressman from Oregon (Les AuCoin), as an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, as press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and as a private sector lobbyist.  This blog also allows me to link another favorite pastime – politics and the art of developing public policy – to what I write.  I could have called this blog “Middle Ground,” for that is what I long for in both politics and golf.  The middle ground is often where the best public policy decisions lie.  And it is where you want to be on a golf course. A PEW Research Center report asked this probing question the other day:   What can we trust 2020 election polls to tell us?   Well, the answer is we are not sure.  At least I am not sure. After what happened in 2016 — polls predicted Hillary Clinton would win, but Donald Trump produced what could be called an upset – it is hard to know whether polls can be accurate. As Election Day draws closer this year, PEW says, if we are trusting polls to predict the future, then our trust is misplaced. The best answer about polls, PEW contends, is to expect them to reveal our priorities and values – and why we vote the way we do – not the who-wins prediction. “Good pre-election polls try to get inside people’s heads.  They attempt to understand the reasoning behind Americans’ values, beliefs and concerns.  They explore how voters are reacting to major events such as the pandemic and economic downturn; how they feel about the candidates and policies; and which factors are motivating them to vote for a particular candidate, or whether to vote at all.” And, beyond that, I also wonder whether who-wins type of polls can be relied upon in these days of high tension and interpersonal argument.  I don’t know that people will respond accurately on controversial issues or candidates. Over my career in politics, I have witnessed the work of crummy pollsters – those who produce polls to confirm pre-poll perspectives.  We used to call them “push polls,” as in pushing respondents to a prearranged point of view. Push pollsters give a bad name to the solid operators. All of this came to mind as I read a story in the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) story under this headline:

The Pollster Who Thinks Trump Will Win

Robert Cahaly foresaw the outcome in 2016. Will ‘social acceptability bias’ deliver another surprise?

In the WSJ interview, Cahaly defined “social acceptability” this way:

“The mainstream media and other authority figures have openly and aggressively contended that Trump is a white supremacist, a would-be dictator, a cretinous buffoon and an inveterate liar.  In such an environment, poll respondents who sympathize with the president, or who believe his administration has on balance done more good than harm, may be forgiven for not saying so to a stranger over the phone.

“Do people lie to pollsters?  ‘Yes,’ Cahaly says, ‘but they’re not necessarily doing anything wrong.  If a grandmother says, ‘This is my grandson, isn’t he a handsome boy?’ and you can see he’s anything but handsome—he’s sickly and weird-looking—you don’t say, ‘No, he’s sickly and weird-looking.’  You just say, ‘He sure is.’ ”

Let me underline a point I made earlier.  If you agree to a phone call from a pollster (by the way, I refuse all such calls), you might not respond accurately for fear that, in a controversial issue such as abortion, same sex marriage, capital punishment or the like, your response may end up being used against you, especially in a society marked by pervasive social media.

Or, you may just not want to admit support for a controversial issue or candidate.  

So, it’s tough for polling these days to be accurate because accuracy still depends on the honesty of respondents.

And that means that, in the current presidential race, I am trying to ignore all polls and just wait for the outcome next Tuesday or whenever it occurs.