The Power of Polls

I must say the more I look at polls and actual results it is amazing to me how far off they can be. I would say it makes me wonder why they even bother to take them, but then I began to realize that the purpose of polls is quite different than what I thought their purpose was and I’m sure it’s quite different than what most people think it’s supposed to be.

I think most people think the purpose of polls is to be predictive, and I’m sure in many cases it appears that way. There is quite an amazing science that goes into them and I’m beginning to wonder if there isn’t an even more subtle science behind them and their real use. They do seem to predict, though often they are very wrong as is the case in the Scott Walker recall election. I have now begun to wonder if they are not more the cause of the outcome than merely the prediction of it. Certainly those who study polls have probably look at the various effects of predicting things before people vote on them. I can’t help but wonder if they don’t walk a thin line between determining what to predict so as to change the outcome by just enough so as to manipulate it. Polling groups are quite aware that people pay attention to polls and that declaring an avalanche vote can often cause one group or another to not even show up. They must equally be aware that predicting something really close may cause a group with the slight edge or the slight underdog position to show up in greater numbers. In this way it is conceivable that they might be able to influence the outcome of a specific vote.

I wonder does anyone actually check up on their numbers and who they polled or do they simply declare that they did it and make up results and as such manage to manipulate the outcome of a given race.

Either way it is clear that in the case of Wisconsin the pollsters didn’t have a clue about what was really going on, so you have to wonder who they were really polling. In many respects it seems to me that polling is more like a form of propaganda than a predictive science. It only seems to be predictive because the desired event is so often brought about. The pollsters were predicting for the most part a dead even heat within the margin of error giving Walker only a slight edge. Was this designed to get out the vote from the unions and the democrats? Were people just lying to the pollsters? Were the questions that were asked slanted?

There is usually no way to know the answers to these questions because only the people being polled know what the questions are. On top of all this the questions themselves can force or direct certain responses from those being polled. If you ask, “Do you beat your wife every night?”, with the answer allowed only being yes or no, then you might get the impression that most men don’t beat their wives EVERY night only occasionally or weekly and of course they leave much of the interpretation up to those hearing the response to the poll.

I become more convinced all the time that we pay far too much attention to the polls. Every time you hear one the responses change. Are we really that frenetic? I do not believe the American people change their minds that much or that dramatically on a nearly daily basis. I also don’t believe they are really all that undecided about whether or not they will vote for someone. At this point they certainly know most of the facts about the incumbent and the job he’s been doing and as such it is not likely they’re going to change their mind unless some major revelation comes out about Obama. Aside from this situation it is most like they have already decided to either vote for him or not vote for him already. The only reason they would say they’re undecided is because they’re either wondering or hoping some other last minute information will come out to confirm their decision. Certainly no one is hoping they’re wrong. It is not in the nature of people to hope they are wrong. We only need take an honest look at ourselves to understand this. We are always looking for confirmation that we are right. Because no one wants to be wrong I am equally convinced that no one really believes they are wrong right now until proven wrong otherwise they would change their opinion on a given matter before confronted about it.

As I listen to the news, especially where politics are concerned it seems the word poll comes up over and over to the point that now that I’m aware of it I find it very annoying. I wonder sometimes how I ever missed it before. Yet no matter how often these polls turn out wrong they keep pushing them at us as though they are something reliable. I wonder if they actually believe their own polls or at least the poll results they seem to be getting or if they really are nothing more than a propaganda device. I tend to think they really are just a very cleverly disguised propaganda devise.

Either way the evidence seems to be in after the Wisconsin race that these polls are wholly unreliable. They had the candidates being within a couple of points of each other yet it turned out to be near a 10 point difference. This is not a rounding error. This is a big error. It is the difference between a landslide and a close race or even a marginal win.

Rather than report on real news most of the media outlets would rather just make phone calls, essentially doing nothing more than asking people what they think about something and then declaring that. Well we already know what we think, and most of us communicate with others and as such know what most of them think about things as well. We really don’t need this. And though the polls contain facts of a sort they are certainly not facts in the sense that actual events are.

The media is more than happy to report on facts about things like fights and murders, but it seems they will have nothing to do with facts like Obama being a member of the New Party, which is just another name for the American Socialist party, or the fact that no one has yet seen his actual physical birth certificate or even a tested microfilm of it.