“Did you see the poll?”

My brother Ian asked me this question across the dinner table the night the SG Election poll went out. My heart lurched, and I paused, setting down my fork.

“What poll?”

I saw Ian’s face change. I had no idea what he was talking about, but I knew he didn’t want me to find out. He sputtered an explanation of the SG Election Poll Results, a poll that a few other students put together after asking select students who they would vote for if the election were to take place right then and there.

I asked about the SIRB Poll, and after several failed attempts to tell me he hadn’t seen it, Ian told me who was leading with the percentage of votes.

Then he told me where I was, and I burst out crying.

I didn’t know whether I was so upset because I was losing, or because Ian had denied what he knew of the results, but I knew that I didn’t want anyone else to see the poll.

Unfortunately, the entire high school had access to it.

According to an ‘apology’ email from the pollsters sent two days after the polls went public, the intent of the poll was to “generate interesting discussion and conversation.” How can the Upper School discuss amongst each other, I wonder, the results of a poll that left ten already stressed students worried about their positions in the race? How can we have a conversation about the results, when simply bringing it up reminds those without the highest percent where they stand?

Parker is a small school. Everybody knows each other, so the results of the polls feel particularly personal. Parker is so intimate that everyone can connect the names with faces and speculate as to why their peer, their friend, their teammate, received so few votes.

Regardless of the school size, however, there are people behind every poll. Students spend so much time and energy running for a position they care about, and bad polling results can only hurt the candidates and minimize their efforts.

There is a reason polling data for the official Student Government Election is never broadcast to the high school, and there is a reason students have never been allowed to poll each other in the past.

How can Parker encourage students to run for positions, when running only sets them up to expose their possible failures? There is something valuable about students putting themselves out of their comfort zones and risking a loss to do something they are passionate about, and this poll shuts them down.

Why does it matter who is ahead in the polls weeks before Democrafest, speeches, debates, and elections? Why does it ever matter who is getting more votes than whom, and why should that information be open to the entire high school? And I can say that in no way was seeing the poll helpful and an opportunity for me to refine my platform or my campaign; if it had been, maybe the candidates polling lower would have turned out on top.

I wish I could express my hopefulness that election polling will not continue in the future, but I can’t. For all I know, the students who conducted the polls don’t understand why it needed to be taken down, and their only regret is the polls’ inability to account for bias.

Bias was not the only problem.

Yes, the poll interviewed a small number of students–116, to be exact–and was unable to account for bias, and yes, the pollsters should have notified the candidates before sending out the results, but this was not the main problem.

While the poll failed to correctly predict the winners of the DCA election, the SIRB election, and the Presidential election, it did predict the losers.

Jack Maling was polling first place and won Treasurer; Felicia Miller and Annette Njei were polling as the top two for President, and a runoff decided the winner; Ava Stepan and Aaron Stone polled highest for SIRB and–unsurprisingly–a runoff between the two decide their fate, as well.  

I have no doubt that such polls have the ability to impact election results, and I have no doubt that this one did. With the exception of DCA, the poll did predict the top two polling candidates correctly, leaving the other two to be stuck in the “they won’t win anyway” position.

The poll is now unavailable to the public, but I will never forget the feeling of my heart dropping or the look on Ian’s face when he realized he couldn’t hide the results from me any longer. The humiliation, public exposure, and lack of understanding were the problems, and I hope that for any student who chooses to run in the future, their campaign will not be negated by a poll.