Simply put, polls are not information, polls are opinion swaying devices.
Generally, I lie when I do surveys. I tell people I am of a different race, and give them false leads. I LOVE TO DO THIS. It’s a game. Even when the Census takers come, I never give my true religion or my true race. KIND OF LIKE THE MODERN THING, I DO IDENTIFY AS A WOMAN, OR BLACK, OR MIGHT EVEN BE A WHITE MAN LOCKED IN A BLACK BODY.
My daughter turned all polling calls over to her adolescent children. She and her friends did this for years because they strongly believe their political views are not for public consumption. It amused the children, who gleefully participated. That was an indication to me of the reliability of polling data.
“Simply put, polls are not information, polls are opinion swaying devices.”
Bingo! We have a winner!
Amen.
Quite.
And the lazy media, who rely on polls rather than reporting, cannot handle the reality that many people hate polls and pollsters - especially a pre-election flood of calls - and gladly subvert this so-called oracle.
Some polls are. They are used to determine where to spend cash and they can be very accurate; they are also closely held secrets. Same as marketing research -if you have $50K to spend, who is for you, who is against you and who hasn’t decided, and what media does that undecided group consume, that is where you spend your precious cash. And like marketing research you and I will never see that data (except when I worked on those polls). With that exception you are pretty much right.
That’s true’ but so are caucuses.
If you live by the polls, you will die by the polls.