Are Media Conglomerates Skewing the Frequency of Polls and Negatively Impacting Candidates like Tulsi Gabbard? (Explained Through Data)
Summary: Media agencies are skewing the democratic primary election to favor more well known, established candidates, by making fewer “qualifying” polls available after the second debate. If DNC pushed their “Qualified” media organizations to release more polls, or just as many polls as after the first debate, Tulsi would most certainly qualify.
Tulsi Gabbard, a Hawaiian congresswoman is running in the 2020 Democratic Presidential Election. In a crowded field, her main stance has been to end Regime Change Wars and reinvest the trillions of dollars spent on wasteful conflicts and military weapons, to instead provide for infrastructure and healthcare.
However, her main stumbling block is a DNC Regulation that requires Tulsi Gabbard to meet four qualifying polls with a minimum of 2 % threshold to enter third democratic debate. Tulsi has received a confirmation for meeting two poll requirement, a CBS/Yougov poll in New Hampshire (CBS/YouGov) 2% (July 2019) and a CNN National Poll in August. She still needs three more.
In this article, I will explain that the reason Tulsi has not met the polling requirement is very likely a result of significantly fewer qualifying polls released after the second debate. Those polls, conducted largely by media corporations, were much more frequent before the second debate, compared to after the second debate, unfairly favoring candidates who are more well-known and require less need for democratic debates to showcase their policies.
As Tulsi is less well known by the public, her appearances on the democratic debate stage is a key forum for her to share her message to the American people. As we see in the graph below, each time she has the opportunity to present her case in a debate, in front of the American Public, her national polling figures rise. Below is a graph showcasing the average of polls conducted in three different time periods, May 27th- June 27th (before the first debate), June 28th to July 31st (after the first debate) and August 1st to August 15th (after the second debate)
Yet the distribution of the timing of polls is much more favorable to established, recognizable candidates because many more polls were released in June compared to July, leaving new faces such as Tulsi Gabbard less opportunity to leverage their second debate performance. In the first half month period after the first debate, there were 6 DNC qualifying polls released as compared to only two that were released in the two weeks after the second debate.
Data shows that if there is a similar distribution of polls after the first debate, as compared to after the second debate, Tulsi Gabbard would be very likely to surpass the polling requirement by the DNC.
Here is the rationale.
If we considered all polls listed on the database of Real Clear Politics from 6/28–7/31 (after first debate) and 7/31–8/15 (after the second debate), we see that the polling average moves up from 1.04% to 1.22% respectively, a 16% increase. To account for the variability in polls, we calculate a standard deviation for the period between 8/1–8/15, which is 0.833%. We then set this estimate to a normal distribution with a mean of 1.22% and standard deviation of 0.833%. In this case, we calculate that with each national poll that comes out, there is an 18% chance that Tulsi either meets the 2% requirement or surpasses it. Therefore, the expected value of every new poll can be assumed as 0.18.
Next to the local polls,
New Hampshire, (Expected Value 1)
In the last two unofficial polls conducted in New Hampshire after the second debate, she has received polling averages of 5% and 3% which is way beyond the 2% requirement. Even in previous polls after the first debate she has already surpassed the 2% mark so we can confidently assume that if any new poll is located in New Hampshire, the chance of Tulsi qualifying will be near 100 %.
South Carolina, (Expected Value 0.8)
After the second debate, there has only been one poll conducted in SC which resulted in a 2% for Tulsi. Realizing that our data is not as confident with only one sample data point, we make an assumption that 80% of polls in SC will meet or surpass 2% to qualify.
Iowa (Expected Value 0.2)
After the second debate, there has only been one poll conducted in Iowa which resulted in 1% for Tulsi. As previously explained, one sample data point might not be certain enough so we provide a slight leeway assuming that 20% of the polls in Iowa will meet or surpass 2% to qualify.
Nevada (Expected Value 0.8)
Tulsi Gabbard registered in the Gravis Poll at 2% on August 16th, which is also the only poll released after August 1st. Although it is not qualifying, we can assume that like South Carolina, this one data point approximates that 80% of the future polls would be qualifying as well.
Finally, we look at the distribution of qualifying polls conducted in the month after the first debate. There were …
National Polls: 7
Iowa Poll: 2
New Hampshire Poll: 2
South Carolina Poll: 3
Nevada Poll: 0
If there was the same number of polls after the second debate:
Then 7* 0.18 + 2*0.2 + 2 + 3*0.8 + 0= 1.26 + 0.4 +2 +2.4= 6.06 Qualifying Polls
Tulsi would be expected to receive 6.06 more qualifying polls and would easily reach the threshold of the third debate.
Even if the media agencies didn’t meet the exact threshold of the previous month, and there was only one regional poll for each of the early states. Then Tulsi will still be expected to qualify, with more than 3 necessary polls.
1*0.2 + 1 + 1*0.8 + 1*0.8 = 0.2 +1+0.8 + 0.8=2.8 Qualifying polls
In the final analysis, it is fairly certain Tulsi Gabbard would qualify for the three additional 2% polls threshold if media agencies released a fair amount of polls in the month after the second debate. However, only four news agencies have released qualifying polls between August 1st until the time I am writing this article on August 21st. By releasing fewer polls, media agencies are skewing the democratic primary election to favor more well known, established candidates. Why are media agencies not releasing as many polls as they should be? This question deserves much public scrutiny.
