Election day is tomorrow, which means that in a few days, we will finally be free of the worst aspect of every election — the never-ending data analysis.
Every election season, newsroom data analysts like Steve Kornacki and Harry Enten become A-list celebrities. Their endless analysis of polls, approval ratings and prediction market odds floods our screens. Their incessant number crunching becomes the sideline commentary for America’s favorite sport: electoral politics.
By trying to extract meaning from every number they can get their hands on, they try to bring certainty to politics, a realm often defined by uncertainty. This hasn’t stopped America from becoming addicted to data as the best way to understand the country’s political dynamics.
Political candidates’ messaging and policy platforms are focus-tested and polled to oblivion. Nothing must be proposed that goes against what the polls show is strongly supported. The result is a stagnant, unambitious political system.
Politics then becomes something the average person largely interacts with the way they would a sport. They prattle off survey data in an argument with a friend to prove that “their team” is better, or use opinion polls to inform their betting behavior on prediction markets.
This year, NBC’s data analyst Kornacki launched “Kornacki Cam,” a livestream where he analyzes data as it comes in the night of an election. Each episode draws hundreds of thousands of viewers, showing that Americans can’t get enough data analysis.
Watching “Kornacki Cam” is truly one of the most stressful experiences one could put themselves through. The show is five straight hours of the world’s most stressed man sifting through a mountain of papers, punching numbers into his calculator and wildly gesticulating to a giant map of the U.S. as it fills up with election results.
The show exists mostly to try to provide certainty over an outcome that will only actually come when all of the votes are counted. Some people just can’t wait until the next day to gain that certainty.
Kornacki’s analysis mostly entails talking about what the numbers mean — whether they suggest a good night for a candidate. What isn’t talked about much is the why of politics. Why certain candidates are doing better than others, or why certain counties are experiencing lower turnout than last year.
Of course, the data can be used as a guide to answer those deeper political questions, but more often than not, that data becomes the entire story. Commentators, politicians and voters become blinded by the data.
Today, it rarely feels like politicians will do anything that they can’t justify with polling data. This is part of the reason why so many campaigns feel so milquetoast and hollow; no candidate is willing to rock the boat.
The thing is, it’s often taken at face value that polls show iron-clad truths about American society, when that couldn’t be further from the truth. A poll only gives a snapshot of public sentiment at a given time, but people change their minds all the time. Pundits and campaigns think they can use the data to predict how voters will act or understand public sentiment in real time, which makes them incapable of looking forward.
Too many politicians today forgo strong convictions or letting their results in office speak for themselves because the data says they shouldn’t. Perhaps this is why the most recent governments have been some of the least productive in modern history — they aren’t willing to do anything the data doesn’t support.
Unambitious politics has further entrenched political tribalism. Too much data analysis has only helped reinforce this polarization. In the past few years, prediction markets like Polymarket and Kalshi have exploded in prevalence. These platforms allow polling data, like player stats, to be used by the public to bet on races as they would bet on a basketball game.
Betting market odds have become a whole new category of data commentators want us to be obsessed with. Last year, CNN announced a deal with Kalshi, further integrating gambling with politics. For months, Kalshi odds have filled CNN’s lower chyrons, and their data analyst, Harry Enten, has frequently plugged them into coverage of this year’s elections. Sometimes it feels like CNN and ESPN have become one in the same.
Data, while useful in understanding public sentiment, has overwhelmed political commentary to an upsetting degree. Data has become the entire story, rather than one of its details. Too much focus on data forces politicians into unambitious boxes and accentuates the gamification of politics.
We all should put a little less emphasis on data when trying to understand politics. Many of America’s most historically important political developments were completely unpredictable, even when looking at data. They involved politicians too obscure to appear in surveys, or ideas too new to evoke strong reactions from the public. Data can’t answer everything, so our news needs to ask deeper questions about why data matters.
Jackson is a first-year journalism major. You can reach him at jacksonhatcher@dailynebraskan.com.
opinion@dailynebraskan.com
{{description}}
Email notifications are only sent once a day, and only if there are new matching items.
The Daily Nebraskan (@dailynebraskan) • Instagram photos and videos
Your browser is out of date and potentially vulnerable to security risks.
We recommend switching to one of the following browsers:
Other Articles
Top California Democrats rally in unity – CNN
