In 2016, 171 voting members participated and it was dead-on:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/06/09/theater/Survey-of-Tony-Award-Voters.html
Surprisingly, it was close between Jessica Lange and Lupita Nyong'o. For some reason I thought Lange was the expected winner that year.
Also, I know it's a joke, but using the 2016 election to gauge the trustworthiness of the poll isn't completely fair. A lot of the races in the states that flipped were close and within the margin of error. The polls did get the national vote correct as more people did vote for Hillary nationally than Trump. And unlike say Donald Trump, I don't know if people would be embarrassed to publicly admit that they would vote for Katrina Lenk and that's what people in polling call social desirability. Some people just give an answer they think the pollster wants to hear or is socially acceptable. And one final and important thing, many people conducting polls in the election randomly dial numbers and anybody could pick up, even people who ultimately will not show up to the poll and there's been writing about how way more people who said or were most likely going to vote for Hillary in those key states that flipped did not show up than for Trump. It's much less of a controlled sample. I think surveying about 1/8 of the voting members as it happened this year give us a pretty good direction of where these races are going. Also, the likelihood that they will send in a ballots is high because for one it's a much more convenient and easy process than voting in the Presidential election, and if they are Tony members and were willing to participate in this survey, most likely they are passionate members who live and breathe theatre and want to vote for the Tonys. Plus, there hasn't been on-going and constant polling going on making people feel like certain races are done deals so they don't have to vote.
I'm not saying they won't be wrong in certain categories, but I do think one has to consider a lot of factors before dismissing something.
Updated On: 6/7/18 at 05:46 PM