To hell with polls
Via TomDispatch:I hate polls. They are innacurate at best, a deliberate means of misleading the public at worst. They have never called a close election accurately, and so many invalid assumptions are built into most commerical polls that they are downright malpractice on the part of pollsters. If you wish to preserve your peace of mind, ignore all polls until after this election. They aren't going to be right anyhow.
"Three things are worth remembering, if you can't kick the poll-watching habit:
(1) Any individual poll can be off by 15%.
(2) Any collection of honestly conducted polls, looked at together, will show a very wide range of results and you won't be able to tell which of them is right.
(3) Even the collective results of a large number of polls probably will not give you an accurate read on a close election.
From these three points comes the most important conclusion of all -- don't let the polls determine what you think or what you do."
This is what happened to many Democrats during the primaries. They allowed polls and prognostications to dictate their votes; that's always a mistake.
These past weeks many Dems have be discouraged or dispondent because of bogus polling showing Kerry far behind Bush. It seems the debate evened things out, but it's not so. This is only a story line to sell newscopy, not reality. The electorate is not that fickle and mercurial.
Kerry is and has been for some time tied with or ahead of Bush. Keep in mind that, historically, no President having hard re-elect numbers less than 50% has ever been re-elected. Bush has been in that territory for months on end. He will NOT be re-elected. The only way for Kerry to lose this election is for the GOP to steal it.
Buck up. Sign up to monitor a local polling place if you are voting early. If not, just go out and vote and make sure that everyone you know who might vote Democratic does so, as well. Then we'll win.
TomDispatch has a lengthy article on the subject of polling which is well worth reading.
posted by Michael Bryan @ 10/07/2004 03:16:00 PM
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