Stop the Polling Insanity
OVER the past few weeks, cable news networks and other media sites have trumpeted wild fluctuations and surprising results in polling on the presumed general-election matchup between Donald J. Trump and Hillary Clinton.
The Reuters/Ipsos tracking poll showed a roller-coaster ride: It went from a 13-point Clinton lead on May 4 to a tie just five days later. Six days after that, on May 15, Mrs. Clinton had a six-point edge. But an NBC/Survey Monkey poll showed a bare three-point margin for Mrs. Clinton nationally over Mr. Trump.
At the same time, Quinnipiac polls focused on key battleground swing states showed success for Mr. Trump: up by one point in Ohio, and down by only one point in Pennsylvania and Florida — shocking results in states that were expected to be much more favorable to Mrs. Clinton, and particularly striking when other surveys showed the red state of Georgia, which should be a Trump stronghold, a tossup.
In this highly charged election, it’s no surprise that the news media see every poll like an addict sees a new fix. That is especially true of polls that show large and unexpected changes. Those polls get intense coverage and analysis, adding to their presumed validity.
The problem is that the polls that make the news are also the ones most likely to be wrong. And to folks like us, who know the polling game and can sort out real trends from normal perturbations, too many of this year’s polls, and their coverage, have been cringeworthy.
What about the neck-and-neck race described in the NBC/Survey Monkey poll? A deeper dig shows that 28 percent of Latinos in this survey support Mr. Trump. If the candidate were a conventional Republican like Mitt Romney or George W. Bush, that wouldn’t raise eyebrows. But most other surveys have shown Mr. Trump eking out 10 to 12 percent among Latino voters.
The Quinnipiac polls have their own built-in problems. In each of the battleground states, their samples project electorates even whiter than the states had in 2012 (as shown in exit polls taken at the time), even though these states have seen significant increases in minority numbers...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/20/opinion/stop-the-polling-insanity.html?_r=0
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I still don't see why we can't eliminate the hassle and inconvenience of actually voting and instead simply let online polls decide who wins and who loses an election. It would save local governments and taxpayers lots of money; and, as Sanders rightly claims, even online (push the same button hundreds of times) polls are more accurate than actual results based on millions of flesh and blood human beings casting their physical votes and getting a little sticker that says, "I voted." 
