Was cable TV election poll coverage a waste of time?

Associated Press

NEW YORK

It’s understandable if Bill Hemmer, John King and Steve Kornacki still see flashing maps of blue and red states in their mind’s eye before drifting off to sleep.

Each man was assigned by his television network to stand before a map of the U.S. several times a day during the election campaign to talk about the latest polls and speculate on “paths to victory” for Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.

Given the Republican’s surprise win, it’s hard not to wonder whether it was wasted time that in future campaigns might be better spent trying to understand voters or the more substantive issues facing a new president.

“I do not feel it was a wasted political exercise at all,” said Hemmer, of Fox News Channel. “Based on the level of national interest in this story, people were hungry for information and it was our duty to provide that.”

The one dominant theme of the map-side discussions was that Clinton had the clear advantage, and that many things had to go right for Trump to win.

“If you Googled it, you would probably hear the phrase ‘inside straight’ several times, because that was what they needed,” Hemmer said.

There were signs in the campaign’s final days things were tightening, and it was reflected in the reporting.

Nate Silver of ESPN’s 538 blog, in fact, was sharply criticized by Clinton supporters the weekend before the election for not being as bullish about their candidate’s chances as others were.

MSNBC’s Kornacki, a political junkie who volunteered for his map duty, argued that studying the polls is as important to spot trends as better regional reporting, even with the spotty performance this year. “We cannot go out and conduct 350 million interviews across the country.”

Thomas Patterson, a professor who teaches about politics and the press at Harvard University wrote a decade ago about the flood of polls damaging campaign coverage.

He called them a cheap branding opportunity for universities and media organizations.