AMERICAN PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION, WHY WERE POLLSTERS SO WAY OFF?

 “For true understanding, comprehension of detail is imperative, since such detail is well-nigh infinite, our knowledge is always superficial and imperfect.” - Francois de La Rochefoucauld

As I was anxiously watching the American Presidential Election results on TV for three nights, I was surprised how close the results were and also how much pollsters were way off. I wondered, in this age of supercomputers, A.I. (artificial intelligence), machine learning and accumulated experiences about elections, how could this happen?

I am not a pollster, but as I see it, the methodology pollsters use to collect data is not objective enough. They rely only on surveys and opinion polls. In addition, they wrongly believe that the data they collected is knowledge and they base their decisions on this data. To me, data collected by surveys is nothing more than stated opinions of people. It is dependent on their education, cultural levels, biases, personality characteristics and partisanships. Therefore, this data is more fiction than facts.

In medicine, us doctors trust and clinical researcher most often use, an objective research method called Randomized Clinical Trails (RCT). I believe by reviewing this method more closely, we could better understand why pollster are not so reliable.

Clinical researchers use RCT method frequently to document the effectiveness and the side effects of a new medication, vaccine or a new procedure. They randomly assign participating volunteers, regardless of their age, gender and ethnicity, to a group that gets the medicine, vaccine or undergoes the procedure. The other group, called control group, gets a similar looking placebo in form of a sugar pill, a saline injection or a sham procedure. The researchers and the participants are blinded so that they do not know who gets what. Without randomization and blinding, it would be impossible to eliminate personal biases, to ascertain the placebo effects an, the personal characteristics of an individual on the outcome of the study. Only then investigation metrics are carried out.

So, we clearly see that methodology used to investigate and collect the data makes all the difference. Data is nothing more than collected raw material. Data alone hardly says anything about an event or a research project. It could be misleading and inaccurate. Yet, the allure of data is undeniable.

Raw data needs to be processed and organized into a given context to make sense and to become information. Information by itself is a flow of messages. Information too must be organized and put into a context, to be understood, comprehended and studied, in order to turn into knowledge. Knowledge combined with accumulated experience creates wisdom. Only knowledge and wisdom help us to make the right decision from the collected data/facts and predict the correct outcome of an event. 
And that is why pollsters are not always completely right and reliable.