In the aftermath of the polling industry’s failure to accurately predict the results of the presidential election last fall, experts have sought various explanations for the disconnect.
One theory posits that people were, and continue to be, ashamed to voice support for President Trump and his policies in phone interviews, making online polling a superior method for accurately capturing public opinion.
In a new report released last week, the Pew Research Center investigated that possibility, conducting the same survey with polling samples both online and over the phone. The experiment does not support the embarrassed-Trump-supporter theory.
Pew reported:
Overall, the survey experiment did not find significant mode differences in overall opinion about Trump or many of his signature policy positions. The web mode yielded estimates that were 1.8 percentage points more supportive of Trump and his policy positions, on average, than estimates from the phone mode. The differences ranged from 0 to 8 percentage points. In total, four of the 27 differences observed were statistically significant using conventional testing for opinion polls.
Getting more specific, the report detailed that “Both modes tell the same story,” explaining, “both find minority support for a wall along the entire Mexican border, minority support for the travel restrictions on certain majority-Muslim countries, minority support for a national law enforcement effort to deport immigrants living in the U.S. illegally and an essentially even split on attitudes toward the 2010 health care bill.”
Pew carefully noted, however, that “the two items that showed the largest difference between web and phone both focused on the policy treatment of undocumented immigrants.”
Nevertheless, the firm concluded in its report that “the big picture about where the public stands on Trump’s signature policies is not dependent upon whether the poll was conducted online or by phone.”
Emily Jashinsky is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.
