Harris Poll’s Will Johnson: Why Polling Still Matters

“At the end of the day, it’s a pretty simple business that we’re in: We want to understand culture, we want to understand consumers’ thinking, and we’re just trying to answer why’s.”

On April 21st, Merion West editor-in-chief Erich Prince was joined by Will Johnson, who serves as chief executive officer of The Harris Poll. In addition to overseeing The Harris Poll, Mr. Johnson frequently contributes media commentary at publications including the Chicago Tribune, The Washington Post, and The Boston Globe. In their conversation, Mr. Johnson makes the case for the continued relevance of polling despite the reputational damage it endured following the presidential elections of 2016 and 2020, discusses preferred methodologies for accurately capturing public opinion, and brings into focus a few relevant current trends The Harris Poll has discovered with its recent surveys. This interview was lightly edited for clarity.

The first thing I wanted to ask you was discussed also in an interview I conducted with Frank Newport, who was editor-in-chief of Gallup at the time, in 2018. The big conversation topic then, as you know, was this idea of the reputational hit that polling took after 2016. Some people, in fairness, might say “Well, what are you talking about? A lot of those election results in 2016 were within the polls’ margins of error.” But for better or worse, a lot of people started seriously doubting polling, and that happened even more so following the election of 2020, especially with, for instance, the polling of Wisconsin. As someone who is at the helm of a polling outfit, what do you make of this narrative that polling has already had its day in the sun?

It’s a great question. It has been absolutely necessary for the industry to do some soul searching, after 2016 and then this last election. Polling isn’t dead, but decision-makers and the media need to know where public opinion lies to be able to make informed decisions. You cannot really get the sentiment of consumers by just looking at behavioral data. If you look at those ones and zeros, you’d think the whole world is black and white, but we are just so gray. We are so nuanced. The only way to get that is by asking questions. For example, people are pro-Roe v. Wade, but they are also open to limiting abortions [by trimester]. They are for the First Amendment, but they’re concerned about too many illegal guns on the street. They are both for Black Lives Matter and are against defunding the police. You are not going to get that unless you find a way to speak to them and in a quantitative way.