Nate Silver…Disregard ‘Internal Political Polls’…..

They are ordered and paid for by the candidate…..

The outfits ain’t gonna get asked back if their product doesn’t make their client happy?

Most political observers find the idea of having access to inside information irresistible. Humans are fascinated by gossip. And reporters prize scoops. So the premise of much political coverage is that it promises to take you “Behind the Curtain” — that’s the title of the Axios column I linked to above.

So as long as I’ve been covering politics, people have been fascinated by internal polls (surveys that the campaigns themselves or closely affiliated partisan groups conduct). Especially given the high-profile public polling misses in recent years, surely the campaigns know the real story of the race?

Well, no. Or at least, not necessarily. If you really knew what the campaigns knew, that would probably provide valuable information. But unless you’re an Iranian or Russianhacker, you probably don’t. Instead, you know what the campaigns want you to know.

Although some people in every field are oversharers1, for the most part campaign professionals are highly strategic in what information they disclose. You’re basically being spun, especially if you’re a friendly source who can be counted upon to pass along the spin uncritically. Internal polls are rarely made up outright, but they’re no different in this regard, strategically shared and designed to shape a narrative rather than to provide accurate information.

Indeed, recent elections have shown that you should be highly skeptical of reports about internal polls. Furthermore, as in a game of telephone, information fidelity degrades as it is further removed from the original source….

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I also don’t doubt that these are real numbers. Internal polls may have house effects because of the factors I described in the first section. (If I were Trump’s pollster, I wouldn’t want to take a meeting with him with polls showing him losing North Carolina.) However, campaigns are also selective in when they share their data with the public. You’re in the field every week, and some weeks will look a little better than others just because of sampling error — polls can be noisy. Or campaigns may run different versions of the numbers, for instance, with different assumptions about likely voters. If one batch happens to be particularly favorable one week, you share it with Politico — otherwise, you don’t….

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