We’ve been seeing political polls with increasing frequency as we head toward the Nov. 8 General Election, but how accurate are they?

You’ll have to pardon my skepticism, but in recent years I have lost faith in polls, and the results vs. what the polls said pretty much bear me out.

After two embarrassing back-to-back presidential polls were off the mark in 2016 and 2020, the public has begun to wonder whether polls have any validity at all, even those that are said to be constructed scientifically.

A survey showed that public opinion polls in the 2020 presidential election had errors of “unusual magnitude.” That’s a polite way of saying that they were way off the mark. The conclusion was reached by the American Association for Public Opinion Research, which studied more than 2,800 polls, including 529 national presidential polls and 1,572 state presidential polls.

Its study found that the polls overstated President Joe Biden’s margin of victory by 3.9% in national popular vote polls and 4.3% in the statewide polls. The study also found that the polls understated ex-President Donald Trump’s support in nearly every state by an average of 3.3%.

The only major local poll, conducted by Muhlenberg College/The Morning Call, showed a five-point lead (49%-44%) for Biden in Pennsylvania going into the week before the 2020 election. The other well-known statewide poll - the Franklin & Marshall College Poll - had Biden winning by 6%. Biden won Pennsylvania by 1.2% (50%-48.8%) to take Pennsylvania’s 20 Electoral College votes. The final tally had Biden besting Trump by 80,555 votes.

Among the five counties in the Times News region, three went for Biden and two for Trump. Biden did best in Lehigh (53.2%-45.6%), followed by Monroe (52.6%-46.2%) and Northampton (49.8%-49.1%). Trump overwhelmingly captured Schuylkill (69.2%-29.4%) and Carbon (65.4%-33.3%). Other nearby northeastern Pennsylvania results showed a split with Biden winning Lackawanna County (53.7%-45.3%) and Trump taking Luzerne County (56.7%-42.3%).

We have two very important statewide elections coming up in Pennsylvania in three weeks from now, and in addition to the poll results that we have already seen, there is sure to be several in the week before Election Day.

The polls say that Democrat gubernatorial candidate Josh Shapiro has a big lead over Republican Doug Mastriano to replace term-limited Democrat Gov. Tom Wolf, while in the U.S. Senate race to replace Republican Pat Toomey, who did not seek re-election, it’s neck-and-neck between Republican Mehmet Oz and Democrat John Fetterman. Recent polls have Fetterman with a small lead, but it is within the margin of error of more than 5%.

The margin of error means that perhaps Oz is even leading, or he could be closer to Fetterman than the polls indicate, or Fetterman’s lead might even be greater than what the results show.

In analyzing past polls, we find that a growing number of Republicans’ mistrust of polls and the media is skewing results. Some refuse to participate in polls either as a form of protest or paranoia that somehow the results will be manipulated to favor the Democrats.

There is also a fear that respondents might give answers that they believe are more socially desirable. For example, someone who supports Mastriano, whose views have been branded as extreme, might plan to vote for him but might tell the poll-taker the opposite. This phenomenon was isolated among some Donald Trump supporters in both 2016 and 2020 when they told pollsters they either supported the Democrat or were undecided.

Pollsters are also finding that their results tend to over-count college graduates and undercount those without a degree. This means that the sample polled could be skewed toward Democrats since more college graduates tend to vote Democratic. It also raises questions of whether the sample polled is truly scientific based on existing demographic information.

Columbia University statistician Andrew Gelman said: “Polling is an inexact science.” He’s got that right. So what’s to be done? Stop polling? Well you know that will never happen, not when there is money to be made and not when the public loves to hate polls.

As for me, I am at the point where I believe that we should stop obsessing about polls and generally ignore them because of their untrustworthiness.

By Bruce Frassinelli | tneditor@tnonline.com