Statistics don't lie...but statisticians often do.  And sometimes they neglect or ignore, which is almost as harmful.

Modern polling, as a "discipline" — no matter how undisciplined it might actually be, with few formal regulations and a soiled reputation — is a relatively recent phenomenon.  It was called "scientific" polling in 1936, when the magazine Literary Digest famously called the presidential election for Alf Landon.  (The magazine went belly-up, but a fledgling market researcher named George Gallup predicted Franklin Roosevelt's victory.)  But polling quickly became the mother's milk of contemporary politics.

If there are intrinsic flaws in polls, it would seem that the bright sunshine of exposure would counter them.  The plethora of competing polls — and their aggregation, as per the statistics compiled by Real Clear Politics and other "watchdog" reporters — would suggest clarity, safety in numbers.  It is also a matter of outliers balancing the reasonably honest and accurate mainstream surveys, in effect canceling each other's bias.

As the 2024 presidential election looms, a quadrennial question will haunt every ballot, as it has since the founding the Republic.  It is the "question" of the Electoral College, whose presence and consequential effects are as real as flesh-and-blood candidates.  However, its propriety and utility are hotly debated.

Proponents and detractors change their positions not according to theories of civics or fidelity to pure (or impure) democracy, but the partisan exigencies of the moment.  But it remains one of the cleverest constructions in the Framers' blueprints: a sure way to balance the concerns and perquisites of a sprawling population, whether living in 13 states or across a large continent.

Despite calls for its abolition, the electoral vote system remains a wise and valuable device and is likely secure.  The Electoral College was defended in The Federalist Papers, and the practice of polling was contemporaneously an inchoate but vital ingredient of the earliest American campaigns.  In 2024, despite the usual opposition to the role of the Electoral College — including the counting ceremonies presided over by the vice president — there is a new realization that a handful of elections-within-elections will decide who will be the next American president.

Electoral votes are of determinative significance of swing states in presidential elections.  They put the "battle" in "battleground."  And as the Electoral College is more significant than ever, it is curious that less attention is paid to electoral votes in many polls and pre-election surveys.  It is never absent, but total raw votes, popular tallies, nationwide head counts are practically irrelevant in comparison yet grab every spotlight.

Surveys and polls are natural byproducts of human nature, societal interaction: gathering opinions, making wise decisions, "looking before leaping."  Indeed, polls drive virtually every aspect of American life.  Commerce is conducted according to surveys.  "Focus groups" drive — or justify — business decisions.  Polling is an industry that informs (or sometimes infects) product roll-outs, advertising budgets, and resource allocation.

In the cornucopia of political categories as polls are aggregated and tracked, even RCP breaks down Electoral College numbers...but for 2020 and previous presidential elections!  Political nerds and high-priced consultants are required to comb through individual state polls...calculate which states are "swing" or "battlegrounds"...and then add up the Electoral College numbers.  That is doable, but in 2023, it seems like plugging one's computer into a candle.

Popular votes routinely are forecast and reported, down to fractions of percentage points.  Daily changes in popular vote trends — head counts, "raw" votes — are parsed to microscopic specificity.  But "moving" numbers and up-to-date forecasts of how states are trending — that is, applied to their electoral votes — scarcely are reported, especially in the aggregate, the "battleground states" grouping.  The Electoral College is the name of the game — realistically, it is the game — and yet it is tracked only, at this stage of the race, by those willing to call upon their adding machines.

The political community — civics-minded citizens as well as commentators and consultants — ought to be able to consult a distillation of the dispositive races on which the presidential election will depend.  Call it a Realistic Electoral Map, a REM.

There is a general consensus about which states are those battleground states.  And if they change over time — it was only a couple decades ago that Florida and Ohio were predicted never to turn Republican — that consensus easily would change.  A REM polling category would clarify the electoral road ahead.

On Election Nights, cable news experts will reduce the United States' silhouette to oddly angled angles and weirdly shaped congressional districts, urban zones, and enclaves of suburbs and exurbia. Why not beforehand? Instead we are fed breaking news that candidates have "nationwide popular vote preferences" of 49.7 to 43.3 per cent...when such numbers are functionally meaningless.

Nate Cohn, in a recent New York Times article, surveyed the shifts in demographics, but less focused on issues and attitudes, which arguably have more impact, considering the "micro" factors vis-à-vis battleground states.  Republicans actually fared relatively well in the 2022 midterms in popular vote totals, leading to surprising victories in blue California and blue New York districts.  It was a dawning rediscovery of targeting neighborhoods and not only big states that kept the Senate Democrat and virtually neutered a Red Wave.  And, let us remember, even if Cohn does not, the possible role of manipulations...

Two-percent, four-percent shifts decided elections...and will do so again.  Yes, in small districts and otherwise obscure neighborhoods.  Crowded Newarks and Detroits?  The broad prairies of Kansas, the deltas of Louisiana?  Virtually irrelevant in modern presidential politics and allocation of resources.

The upcoming presidential election will be a watershed of sorts.  Consequential issues and roiling crises mandate unprecedented attention to battleground states and their precious electoral votes.  Shifting issues and shifting attitudes demand better tracking.  COVID panic is turning to COVID fatigue...and is fueling political skepticism.  Crime has morphed from an old law-and-order mantra to daily paranoia of millions of people.  Regarding the economy, battles of Bureau of Labor statistics have become battles of the budgets — household budgets.  Endless foreign wars are transforming flag-waving into a New Isolationism.  Illegal migration, of course, has turned many neighborhoods into border zones.  Increasingly, previously unconcerned citizens will stop at voting booths on their determined treks to abortion rallies and school board meetings.  Fissures in traditional political loyalties, particularly among Democrats' ethnic "reliables," are evident.

Accurate, detailed REM models of consensus battleground states must be addressed prospectively, not in academic postmortems.  When polled, surveyed, and constructed clearly, and when seized upon by politicians, analysts, and activists, REMs will change the course of the upcoming campaign and election.  And the nation.

It is amazing that it is a tool that has scarcely been constructed and used heretofore.  But in politics, there can be something new under the sun.

Rick Marschall is a former political cartoonist and a frequent commentator.  His weekly Christian blog, more than a decade running, is www.MondayMinstry.com/blog, and his 75th book, The Most Interesting American (about Theodore Roosevelt; Post Hill Press), will be released October 3.

Image via Pxhere.