That is a typical media trick. Prominently report and push a rumor (as a rumor -- "some people are saying that ..."), poll on the rumor, then report (as if it's a fact that exists outside of this "push") that most people think 'the rumor' is true.
Parallel case in point. Some high school kids in Wisconsin did a study regarding the rate of violent crime (number of victims per 100,000 population), the rate of prominent stories about individual violent crimes, and public perception of the crime rate. They found a correlation between the rate of reporting and public perception. The public thought the crime rate was up when crime was reported more, even while the crime rate was in fact down. Perception trumps reality every time.
Another case, "the summer of the shark attacks."
If you ask me, polls ought to be banned anyway, and for the exact reason you just stated. They tend to sway the perception of the public at large, and they are in no way scientific. I don't see how calling 1200 people at random can accurately predict how 100 million Americans will vote. It's just ludicrous.
You may or may not think this is relevant, but I wrote my thesis on how public perception is swayed by popular culture and not fact.
I focused on post WWII American perceptions of Germans and Germany. In the immediate aftermath of the war the anti-German war film scenario still held sway the the support for returning Germany to an agrarian society was popular.
As the Cold War bean in force, both the real news and the MSM reported about the difference between the good German and bad Nazi and how the Germans were our friends and we needed them to help us against the Russians. Opinion polls quickly reflected this change of message.
The real shift came with beginning of the mass-marketingthe of the revelations about the Holocaust and capped by the Eichmann trial. At this point, despite the increasing tensions of the Cold War with Germany as the main potential point of conflagration, American views of Germany and (West) Germans took a nose dive.
It was a pure and obvious example of popular culture manipulating people's perceptions of reality.
Now this is more about how Hollywood molds perceptions than the news media. But since then the distinction between objective news and entertainment has been consistently blurred. Combine this with the overt and even worse covert partisianship of the MSM and we end up with the absurdity of disinformation that we see today.
The right is just begining to play a game the left mastered long ago. Unfortunately, objectivity is a word that has been totally forgotten.
The media sickens me.