Polls measure who people plan to vote for at the time the poll is taken. Whether they know what they are doing or not is beside the point.
Come November large numbers of voters will know rather little about the candidates. A substantial percentage will vote on the basis of how the candidates make them feel. Polls taken before election day will still be meaningful despite this ignorance.
That’s untrue. It’s often not even a question of knowing a lot about a candidate, but rather of simple name recognition. Polls between a “known” and and “unknown” will be very different from polls taken once the “unknown” becomes “known.” People don’t tend to indicate a preference in polls for candidates whose names they don’t recognize. A substantial percentage of those polled knew Rudy, McCain, Obama, Hillary, and possibly Edwards, but that’s about where the list ended for a lot of people.
Unfortunately, your arguments are the same as those of the liberals in the GOP establishment. I don’t mean to imply that you are one of them, but simply to observe that we can all fall into the trap of trusting the wrong talking points.