We have too many TV news channels. They have to have something to talk about, so they talk about polling. At any hour, you can turn to a TV news channel and hear about the latest polls.
Who is ahead, who is behind, how far are they behind, what does it mean? It means very little, or nothing, most of the time. It’s a waste of the Great TV Wasteland’s resources. And it’s deceptive, capable of manipulation and misleading, capable of being used to the advantage of the news organization’s favorite candidate. If you look at the margin of error (And how do they know what that amounts to, I ask you?) you will see that the polls, by their own admission tell us precisely nothing unless the spread is W I D E. And even then, the results can be skewed by the pollsters.
Polling is capable of doing a lot of damage to the democratic process. It has negatively affected voter turnout in USA’s western states, and I’m convinced it affects voter choice in some instances.
We vote a secret ballot for a reason, so our vote will be really ours, and we will neither put ourselves in jeopardy for it nor affect someone else’s vote unfairly by revealing ours to too many people.
Let’s keep it that way. If a pollster asks you who you are voting for ask, “Who are you voting for?”
If they answer the question, it can affect the results of their poll.
If they do not answer the question, you don’t know who they favor and whether their preference will affect the results of their poll.
I hate polling and refuse to answer any pollster’s questions. They are like mosquitoes or online SPAM, arriving unbidden and insistent, wanting what I don’t want to give them and don’t think they have a right to.
My advice is: never respond to SPAM, and never answer a pollster’s questions. If enough of us ignore them, they will go away.
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