Untitled book title post

I have nearly finished the first draft of my book about polls and democracy: As of today, the only things left to do are to clean up the final chapter and rewrite a fair bit of my short introduction. However, I have been unable to settle on a final title for the draft manuscript — a puzzle that is occupying a lot of space in my brain and preventing some much-needed productivity.

When I first sold the book to WW Norton, we settled on tentatively calling it “No Margin For Error: Why We Must Save Political Polling.” Closer to actually doing marketing and publicity for the thing, I have reevaluated and come to the conclusion that this is not a good title. First and foremost, it’s not an accurate description of the book! The book is a history of polling and an explainer of how they actually work in practice, not only a case for why they are normatively valuable (eg to the press, the government, and the people). It’s also trying too hard to be clever.

A shorter and more descriptive title wou…