Polls Have Built in Bias

Speech delivered by Chairman Lamar Smith on the House floor on September 27, 2017

Both The Washington Examiner and Washington Times recently have reported on a practice that is resulting in overly low approval ratings for President Trump.

Pollsters are not necessarily rigging their questions to get a desired result. Instead, they are creating a biased result by how they are select people to poll.

Frequently, the pollsters contact more Democrats than Republicans. Unsurprisingly, the results tilt anti-Trump. The Examiner pointed out that this “robs Trump of about 8 points in his approval ratings, from 46 percent to 38 percent.”

The Times noted that in polls including presidential approval questions, the Economist relied on a sample that used 58 percent more Democrats than Republicans, which “gave Democrats a 14-point edge, while Reuters and Gallup gave Democrats an 11-point and 7-point edge in their samples.”

 As the 2016 election taught us, we shouldn’t rely on biased polls if we want accuracy.