Trump-Harris polls? Wake me up after people actually vote.

Results of political polls are jumping up and down like lines on a seismograph Velcroed to the side of an active volcano since President Joe Biden withdrew his campaign for reelection.

I pay little attention. It’s been a long, long time since I depended upon any published poll for the presidency to provide me with an accurate indication about the leanings of American voters.

There is a significant difference between a poll and a survey, although the word “poll” is used interchangeably. While a poll often consists of one question with or without a limited number of questions, a survey mixes several open-ended questions with one-word answers. Even so, “the real world of survey research is not perfect,” as the Pew Research Center wrote in 2020. Do not confuse national polling with that of Iowa’s Selzer & Co. Ann Selzer’s poll are more accurate because the methodology consists of a well-defined area and issues that do not compete with an alternative outcome.

A few weeks ago, a friend sent me the following information from Political Wire, “one of the earliest and most influential political" websites, founded by Taegan Goddard.

The latest Emerson College survey finds Donald Trump leading Joe Biden in a national matchup, 46% to 43%, with 11% are undecided. When undecided voters were asked which candidate they leaned toward, 50% supported Trump and 50% supported Biden.

The key phrase in this paragraph is “national matchup.” Unfortunately, the survey would be more accurate if the United States held an election in which the majority of votes decided the winner of the election. However, the Electoral College gets in the way. Not one poll I have checked considers the Electoral College, and I have checked on many.

Emerson College’s “data sets were weighted by gender, education, race, age, party affiliation, and region.” Does the data set "region" take into consideration that Rhode Island is predominately Democratic territory compared with Idaho on the other end of the political spectrum? Both states will have four electoral votes this coming election. However, an overall picture of red- and blue-leaning states shows an imbalance of where electoral votes come from. Small states such as Iowa, the Dakotas, Nebraska, Wyoming, and others tip the Electoral College in favor of Republicans. But the heavily populated states of California, New York, and many other coastal parts of the country have an unbalanced number of electoral votes that dwarf those of the flyover states. From Pew: “If pollsters only focused on the Electoral College, the vast majority of Americans (about 80%) who live in uncompetitive states would essentially be ignored, with their needs and views deemed too unimportant to warrant polling.” Then what’s the point of a poll claiming to determine the frontrunner? A national poll may be more accurate discovering the nation’s favorite peanut butter.

Earlier this month, prior to Biden’s withdrawal from the race, a USA TODAY headline read: “Harris leads Biden, Trump in new poll.” Headlines can be deceiving in an election year. Upon reading the story associated with the headline, you will discover that the poll, taken by an obscure firm, considers several “hypothetical matchups.” Do people lie when responding to polls? Of course.

Pew again: “The 2000 and 2016 presidential elections demonstrated a difficult truth: National polls can be accurate in identifying Americans’ preferred candidate and yet fail to identify the winner." This happens when the national popular vote winner (e.g., Al Gore, Hillary Clinton) differs from the Electoral College winner (e.g., George W. Bush, Donald Trump).

When “national” polls in the past have shown that Trump was leading or tied with the Democratic candidate, is it any wonder why Trump and his followers believed the election was stolen? It’s similar to demanding your winnings in a horse race in which your horse came in seventh, but the odds predicted the horse to win.

Leave the polling to the unpublished polls of the campaigns and resolve to accept the results of the election, no matter what your opinion tells you based on “national matchups.”

Marty Ryan of Des Moines is retired after lobbying the Iowa Legislature for 27 years.

This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: Trump-Harris polls? Wake me when people actually vote.