A snapshot or a painting? Metaphors, myths, misuses and misunderstandings of marketing research information by journalists and other people who should know better

In US political reporting, the top story has become the public opinion polls that purport to state the voters’ evaluations of potential candidates, current office holders or the impact of current events. Many politicians, in turn, often develop their campaign positions in response to the polls. This discussion aims to address how year after year, despite increasing spending by news organizations to predict election results, the polls are repeatedly unable to predict election outcomes. Excuses are made, while the misuse and misunderstanding of marketing research spreads to other types of public organizations.

Points out the contradictions between public opinion polling predictions of election results and actual events, with explanations of the usually unstated qualitative limitations to survey data.

Qualitative research bias could have a greater impact on outcomes than statistical margins of error, although it is only the latter that is reported or discussed by the news media.

This abuse and misuse of marketing research lowers the credibility of all marketing research, and the people in marketing research, should speak out. The pollsters want to keep their methods as having a mystical value as they sell their research information to the public and other data users. At worst, this is a misleading selling of marketing insight to the public and research experts should start to speak out, encouraging journalists to report more properly the reality of public opinion polls.

The popular metaphor of public opinion polls has been to call them a “snapshot” of public views. This offers a more realistic metaphor of survey data, an impressionistic painting that is influenced by numerous researchers or respondent biases that cannot be controlled.