“Pollingism” Has Failed Democrats and Voters. Here’s Why, and What to Do Instead

In the now-stale takes about how Democrats lost their electoral way and scuffles around their best present course, leading operatives are brandishing the same compass that led them astray last time. In assessing how to strike back at Republicans and lay tracks for the midterms, what remains unexplored in the data-laden dives are the assumptions about what works to win hearts, minds, and elections in the first place. Not to mention the reason for wanting those wins: to enact the agenda you believe in or, at the very least, blunt the authoritarian assault against Americans now underway.

There are two vastly different ideas about what it takes to achieve political victory, but only one gets real airtime in Democratic circles. This leaves us trapped in circular reasoning, arguing over permutations of a singular strategy. These arguments might look like significant beefs over what Dems should say, to whom, and by what means. But examinations of what went wrong, how to act now, and what to do next fail to even consider the methodology behind these decisions.

The dominant Democratic model views voters as rational individuals who make electoral decisions, including whether to vote at all, based on their conscious preferences about issues. Advocates of this model believe that polling outcomes within controlled survey environments equate to real-world success — that “winning” in testing corresponds to winning in the real world. Although it’s known by other names, the most apt moniker is Pollingism, as it assumes voters’ issue preferences are static, discernible via polling, and hold ultimate, if not exclusive, sway over their voting behaviors and candidate selections. Pollingism does not come with a set agenda for governance; it relies on discerning voters’ registered preferences because it views the political task as winning elections and treats the work of governance as something to be hashed out later.

Pollingism proponents believe that data “shows what voters really think, not what people who work in politics wish they thought.” (Nevermind that the proponents making this claim work in politics.) In their minds, the data have set them free from their biases, including holding fixed stances on right and wrong. The trouble with this is that data aren’t conjured but rather solicited and analyzed according to the assumptions of data collectors. In other words, you only get answers to the questions you ask. And you only get reactions to the ads you produce. And you only assess impacts in the artificial environments you construct. And you only apply findings according to your theory of how humans come to judgments.