How Polling Should Be Done: • Voter as Tiebreaker • Ranked Choice Voting

My last piece — “The Ubiquitous ‘Public Opinion Poll’ Doesn't Actually Measure Public Opinion” — actually understated the problem: every poll being run right now to my knowledge is asking the same question: “If the election for President were held today, and the candidates were Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, which candidate would you support?”

Specifically, if anyone knows a “tracking” poll that is asking a different question, something like “which of the following do you want to be president?”, I’d love to know about it. This is a long standing problem. See my letter to Frank Newport of Gallup from 2016, when he was polling advisor to the Commission on Presidential Debates.

But I’d argue that even that question isn’t really getting at actual voter preference, since it could be clouded by strategic perceptions, e.g., “I have to vote for Harris even though I agree more with Stein because I so hate and fear Trump — and I have to tell myself I want her." 

Therefore, I’d actually suggest the following question:

Kamala Harris, Donald Trump, Jill Stein and Chase Oliver are in a four way tie.

You are the tie breaker.

Who do you vote for?

That is a question that gets at actual voter preference. It empowers the voter. It tells them that their vote matters and has consequences. It compels the voter to vote like their life depends on it.

Another alternative would be to have voters use Ranked Choice Voting (sometimes called Instant Runoff Voting). Here, people rank choices 1, 2, 3, 4. Polling this way would give us insights into many new aspects of voter preference. There’s a movement to institute this reform by groups like FairVote and others. I used one of the tools they list to set up a RCV poll for the presidential election:

Here’s the results of this poll. If pollsters did this, it would be another serious way to get at what the actual opinions of the public are rather than to constrict and distort public opinion as is now being constantly done in polling and reporting on “public opinion”.

FairVote ran a Q and A with me in 2016 about VotePact, which still stands: “VotePact: Do It Yourself Voting Reform”.