In the horserace that is currently the American presidential primary, polls rule the media airwaves. Numbers are compared, predictions are made, front-runners are heralded and yet, strangely enough, upsets are semi-commonplace.

In Iowa last week, caucus-goers turned out for the first presidential primary of the election season, and the Republican and Democratic candidates leading the pack according to the polls--Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton--faced, respectively, a decisive loss and a "virtual tie." Many questions regarding polling arise in the face of such unexpected results: what flaws does the system have? And if there are as many as there seem to be, why do polls hold such a lauded place in American political reporting?

Don't get me wrong, I love political polling. If I'm being frank, I check presidential polls at least a couple times a week right now. I'm a political junkie and like to be as up on the statistics as I can be in order to be and informed and involved citizen. But I also make a lot of mental checks against the data to keep myself more realistic. This includes averaging between various polls, checking the political tilt of the companies that conduct them, accounting for the margin of error, and the like.

On an even larger scale, I question why certain candidates would be favored in polls due to measured analysis of polling tactics. In the case of Trump, for example, who has generally outspoken supporters, it seems highly likely that he would poll better than he would fair in voting because his supporters are more willing to voice their opinion in the polling stage. Often times, candidates with extremely polarizing opinions fair better in the types of polls conducted in America because they require rather dated polling methods, such as answering a telephone (and only landlines are supposed to be contacted for such polling to boot, although this is often not the case). In other words, if you want you opinion heard in a poll, you must really want your opinion heard in general.

The technologically regressive nature of polling plays out in a different way in the case of Clinton. Instead of catering the polls towards the slightly nutty of the political spectrum, it also caters in favor of the establishment: in other words, old people. Again, in order to participate in most reputable polls an individual must be willing to answer a landline phone and then answer a series of questions. Name me one millennial you know who fits that bill and I will show you hundreds more who don't. For Clinton, who has establishment support and its corresponding name recognition, this means her supporters are generally older individuals who will meet the above (unprecedented) demands. Clinton's opponent Bernie Sanders, on the other hand, has majority of his support in the youth vote, who are virtually unaccounted for in traditional polling methods.

All-in-all, what I seem to be saying is to take these polls with a grain of salt. But this is a lot easier said than done because it requires you to be a more actively involved political citizen. Don't allow the media to dictate a horserace based on fudged statistics, pay attention and think about how these numbers originate and what biases are present in the data. And more importantly, always go out and vote. Because while polls may leave out vast portions of the American population, they can be proved wrong in a right (technically) guaranteed to all. Most importantly, however, we may get to see another #TrumperTantrum in the case of another Republican upset, and if that isn't worth voting, I don't know what is.