As part of our series on polling, this article looks at their often poor questions and answers. I don’t mean to criticize the polling organizations- they’re doing well, I think, given their resources and their limiting traditions.

A big problem in polling on issues is the answer set.  A typical question may pose a statement and then ask if you agree.  I encountered some recently that had 5 answers:  Strongly agree, Agree, Neutral, Disagree, Strongly disagree.  The question asked about whether I thought the salary of the head of the local hospital should be capped around $300,000 instead of the current salary of $600,000.  I wasn’t sure.  I feel CEOs are often vastly over-payed.  They often take credit for work and brilliance they didn’t contribute. While a CEO can make a huge difference, so can others at a company.  At the same time, mediocre (or lousy) CEOs can have a huge negative effect (and still get a high salary!).  On the other side, $600,000 is competitive for a hospital CEO.  So if they had an answer of “Slightly agree”, I would have chosen that one.  I chose “Neutral”, but it felt wrong.  I would have preferred two scales of 1..10.  I would have given about an 8 of support for capping at $300,000 and a 7 of support for a competitive salary.  More interesting would be paying someone $400k to do the job and paying a good assistant $200k, to learn the ropes and make the job easier? Many, many polling questions need better answers.

Another problem is that many polls need better, and more, questions. Here’s an example from PeopleCount.org, in the Tradition Energy political profile.  In general, when someone asked me about nuclear power, I was against it, as are most Americans.  Why? The polls don’t tell us.

There was a lot of news about the dangers of a reactor melt-down after the disasters in Japan in 2011 (see question #2), so one big reason is the danger of melt-down. I’m also concerned about the danger of the huge amount (75,000 tons) of radioactive waste our existing plants are producing. This is a large, dangerous, expensive problem.  It’s a target for terrorism as well as a constant challenge to keep it from polluting the land, water and air.

The problem with polls is they simply ask us about “nuclear energy”. For instance, here are three, from Pew, the Nuclear Energy Institute, and Gallup. (I did find one more interesting ITimes poll, but no one had answered it, as of today…)

One of the questions on the PeopleCount.org profile asks about nuclear reactors that produces little radioactive waste. Why haven’t polls asked us before about this technology? Another question asks about a kind of nuclear reactor that can consume existing radioactive waste! Why do polls lump all of our opinions together about nuclear power, instead of separating these other, interesting questions? Are Americans interested in these new technologies that could power the country for years with little pollution or even solve the huge radioactive waste problem we have no other solution for? (80% of PeopleCount users say yes.)

Perhaps polls don’t ask us because we aren’t familiar with these technologies.  If I had first heard about these in a telephone poll, I would have probably said “no”, just because I think nuclear technology and its waste problem are dangerous.  But encountering these in a PeopleCount profile is different.  I can click on a link to get more information and read a bit before answering.  And the answers aren’t just yes or no, they also allow me just to give support for a pilot project.

What would happen if all Americans logged onto PeopleCount.org and supported this? In a few days or a week we might express a groundswell of support and Congress would have the confidence to act quickly.

Polls are designed to answer a pollster’s questions. PeopleCount.org profiles are designed for citizens to guide our government to solve problems.  Our government is meant to be of, by and for the people.  Polls are not sufficient. With your participation, PeopleCount.org can be.

Some talk about what politics and government can learn from business. In business, they’re always looking at “best practices”. Politics in particular, is mired in tradition and seniority. Best practices are missing in politics.

In a sense, this isn’t true. Political campaigns are constantly trading people and brainstorming about how to work better. But in the halls of Congress, mired in gridlock, squabbling, party struggles for power, and poor performance, there’s no reaching out for better practices.

I’ve worked at a lot of companies, some fairly large. Some companies regularly reorganize. The two usual organizations are by product, and by function. So a company will organize by product for a few years, where each product group will contain all its own marketing, engineering, testing, sales and documentation. Then it’ll reorganize by function. All the marketing people will be together and divide into subgroups to work on the various products. Similarly for the other groups.

What this does is shake up the system, and get people to interact with new people, a new hierarchy, a new power structure.

The reason for this is that people tend to develop strong relationships and start using those relationships for everything. They get into ruts. Office politics and power structures evolve. They start dealing with their knowledge about the power structure instead of being focused on their commitment to service and results. It brings a freshness to the organization so it can grow and find new ways of working even as it temporarily disturbs productivity.

Congress never does this. It’s shaken up a little when the dominant party changes, but both parties organize themselves by seniority.

PeopleCount.org will change this, too. We’ll have a fresh orientation. Lots of things will change and lots of problems that exist today, hidden in the bowels of tradition, will bubble to the surface. And we’ll be able to bring fresh solutions to them. Some of the benefits of the old system will be lost, but with the focus on serving the people, new benefits will emerge more aligned with the results we want.

Polling shows a range of results on ballot measures in the run-up to the election. Often, they don’t accurately predict the outcome.

Polling is mathematically sound. It’s been studied enough that in many ways, it’s a science. Why doesn’t polling work?

How polling works.

Pollsters ask a thousand or a few thousand people, pollees, some questions.  The pollees are chosen at random.  Sometimes they’re completely at random, sometimes their demographics are known so that the demographics of the set of pollees together roughly resemble the demographics of the general population.  The mathematical theories behind polling then assert the answers are representative of the whole population.

If the pollees are similar to the population in general, or are chosen truly randomly, statisticians can calculate the odds that the answers of the pollees differ from the answers of the general population.  This gives them the “margin of error”, which is typically under 5% for a national poll where the sample is a thousand people or more.  The math is sound.  So why doesn’t polling work?

Answering a survey is different from voting.

A big part of the problem is: Answering a survey is different from voting.  Many surveys are done far ahead of an election. And answering a survey is part of a conversation. Voting is a committed action, a decision.

I was polled over the phone a few times before the last election.  Each time, the pollster posed an issue and then gave me some choices for answers.  I listened carefully, trying to quickly consider the issue and then weighed each answer.  By “weigh”, I meant I sensed my feelings about each answer, letting thoughts about it percolate up into my mind.  Then I picked an answer I felt was best and we moved on.

On the other hand, when I went to decide my votes, I sat down at my computer with the sample ballot and my voter guide.  I read each measure, scanned the long explanation and the pros and cons and looked carefully at who endorsed and opposed each measure. For the few I was uncertain about, I checked with my wife first, and on a couple of issues I talked to a friend who is more politically involved.  A few times I checked online with some organizations I respect.  I went through a similar process when I decided upon some of the candidates.

Sometimes when I vote I don’t vote that carefully. Almost always I check my answers against my wife’s, and we talk over any differences.

The huge difference in the process leads to a significant difference in the results.

But this is only the beginning of the problems with polling. We’ll look at more in part 2.