“Moses never took a poll in the desert”—Harry Truman
Those of us who have been in political life over the years understand that polls are a staple of the consultants who throw money at shaping public opinion and pundits who throw verbiage at shaping public opinion, who in turn make serious money “interpreting” the very same polls.
Polls are considered by some to be a necessary evil and by others to be completely evil.
The Harry Truman quote that started this essay pretty well sums up my opinion of polls. Those of us in political life who have taken tough votes despite public opinion that favors another course of action know what it is like to demonstrate leadership. The United States was bound and determined to stay out of the war in Europe that had raged since September 1939 to the point that the extension of the Selective Service Act passed by one vote in the House in August 1941, less than four months before Pearl Harbor. Why? Because despite all evidence to the contrary, and it made headlines daily in the United States, people refused to accept the fact that war was going to be necessary and made that sentiment clear at the top of their lungs. And their elected representatives went right along for the ride, preferring to play the percentages, not set them, following, not leading. We were woefully unprepared to go to war after Pearl Harbor as it was. Can you imagine how long it would have taken to win World War II if the United States did not have a standing army to speak of if that extension had not passed?
Polls have a justifiably bad reputation because so many are so miserably and consistently wrong. To paraphrase Mark Twain’s thought about the weather, ‘everybody talks about polling, but no one does anything about it.’
Except to “commission” more and more of them every single day.
I feel the same way about polls as I feel about the folks who forecast weather on TV broadcasts. If we paid them by the percentage they got right, we would have better weather. I am not holding my breath.
Worse, polling has its own bewildering vocabulary. “Sampling errors” is a favorite term for me, which consists of “over-sampling,” “under-sampling,” or both simultaneously. Polls are “weighted” based on “Scientific” factors which see pollsters take information from 1000 people out of 330 million and extrapolate that miniscule sampling size into nationwide conclusions. What could possibly go wrong there?
“Push polls” are not really polls, but a method of creating gossip that ends with a question mark, not a period. Those are the “polls” that ask questions along the lines of, “If you knew that candidate X beat his wife once a week, would you vote for him?” Lawyers cannot even get by with questions like that—but pollsters can—and do.
And we buy these fantasies hook, line and sinker day in, day out, for nearly a century.
I have become more aware of polls recently because President Trump is quite active of late with economic moves like tariffs and continually calling on the Chair of the Federal Reserve, his first term appointee, Jerome “Jay” Powell, to resign.
Powell evidently has a pathological fear of inflation today—he sure didn’t show such signs during the Biden Administration when inflation was running hog wild for years, but perhaps he had some sort of conversion experience he has not shared yet. We do know that he suffers from some sort of allergy to tariffs, no matter how well the markets respond to their use (like record closes on Wall Street after tariffs were supposed to have thrown millions out of work and the planet into some sort of recession).
Powell steadfastly refuses to believe that cutting interest rates would be good for the economy that he is supposed to be supervising—the primacy of the Federal Reserve is an essay for another day—and President Trump heartily and loudly disagrees.
If you took a poll of economic developers, realtors, bankers and young families, you might find that they are nowhere near as concerned about the price of beets as they are about the tens of thousands of additional dollars they will have to pay toward interest on the mortgages they cannot now afford. Workforce housing is a critical issue nationwide, and the best way to put more people in affordable houses is to make them more affordable. It does not take a rocket scientist to figure out that lowering interest rates helps to solve that problem immediately.
Have you seen that poll?
Me, neither.
Not only are polls habitually wrong, I humbly submit that the folks who operate the polls are asking the wrong questions.
Try this one on for size: “Would you prefer to live in a nation that respects the rule of law, or one that glorifies those who break it"?
Or this one: “Would you prefer to send your children to a school that teaches respect for the rule of law, or one that teaches disrespect for those who uphold and enforce the laws”?
Or this one: “If you do not have the foggiest notion of what we are talking about, are you going to answer this question anyway?”
Or finally, “Would you be less confused on a daily basis if polling ceased to exist”?
To be sure, polling has its place (singular):
Fan balloting for the Major League Baseball All-Star Game.
The rest tends to be “sound and fury, signifying nothing.”
The margin of error on this essay is plus or minus 0%.