Long before Polymarket, election polls and predictions were always a form of popular entertainment with a checkered record of accuracy

This rarely recognized feature may help explain Enduring popular appeal From election polls, though Audited record for accuracyEspecially in the US presidential elections. One way or another, polls have failed in election campaigns 2012, 2016and 2020. Their collective performance four years ago was theirs The worst since 1980.

And until now the elections Polls remain everywheredefining a story for journalists, pundits, and the general public about this year’s extraordinary campaign for the White House. They continue to point to a close race between former President Donald Trump and the Vice President Kamala Harris.

The entertainment value of surveys tends to be understated, indirect and disingenuous. In the late 1970s, he was a biographer of George Gallup, the founding father of survey research. Which was called her The “Babe Ruth of the polling profession” described the Gallup Poll in layman’s terms as “pleasurable, accessible, and cheap entertainment.”

The entertainment value of election polls often derives from the focus on which candidate leads the field and which lags behind: “competitive and implicitly entertaining”horse racing“.

Horse racing clichés date back to at least the 1940s and the early years of modern survey research. At the time, pollsters didn’t necessarily welcome that title. For example, Archibald Crossley wrote to Gallup during the 1948 presidential campaign to say: “I have the distinct impression that opinion polls are still regarded as horse-race forecasts, and it seems to me that we might do something in common to prevent such a reputation.”

This cliche has proven to be dismissible – and it is Use He long outlived both men. (Crossley He died In 1985, approximately a After a year Gallup.) Gallup even once considered the idea of ​​creating a tournament among pollsters, an acknowledgment of the kinds of competitive entertainment inherent in electoral polling. He shared his idea in a 1940 letter to Elmo Roper, a rival pollster, saying, “I think it would be a good idea sometime within the next year for (the magazine).” Public Opinion Quarterly“, or those of us interested in this function of measuring public opinion, of setting the rules by which we can stake our claim to the championship” in the accuracy of opinion polls.

Roper, who had always been lukewarm about the value of electoral balloting, wasn’t interested. Although Gallup’s championship idea went nowhere, it suggested that electoral ballot results could be presented in a manner closer to the rankings common in competitive sports. In some ways, Gallup’s proposal was predictable Poll ratings Published online these days in 538.com.

From time to time over the years, polls and pollsters have elicited the wit and satirical humor of various cartoonists. In 2002, for example, Richard Rice A cartoon was published in the weekly financial newspaper Baronshows an angry man barking into the phone, “Who cares what you think?” Rice titled the cartoon “When Good Pollsters Go Bad.” Recently, Virginia Pilot Published an entertaining newspaper cartoon Picture county fair goers lining up to play “Dump the Poll” in a tank of water at $5 a toss.

Although they are not surveys, the growth and popularity of betting prediction markets such as Polymarket It also reflects an entertainment element in election prediction.

Then there’s the entertainment value built into informal or bogus surveys like the poll Popcorn poll The year is 1960. Movie theater patrons and supermarket shoppers were then invited to select containers or bags of popcorn bearing the names of that year’s presidential candidates, John F. Kennedy and Richard M. Nixon. Overall, 53% of popcorn poll respondents favored Kennedy, who narrowly won the election with 49.7% of the popular vote.

Pollsters understandably object to such polls as unrepresentative and unreliable. the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research For example he has male: “Pseudo-unscientific polls are widespread and sometimes entertaining, but they never provide the kind of information that belongs in a serious report.”

However, informal polls represent fun opportunities for people to participate in something vaguely similar to an election poll, and doing so may enhance popular interest in the election. These unscientific attempts are an expression of popular curiosity about “serious” polls – and they tell us something about the ability of election polls to amuse, excite, and to some extent entertain.

More must-read comments posted by him luck:

The opinions expressed in Fortune.com reviews are solely those of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions or beliefs luck.