Poll Bearers
There has been a great deal of talk about polls lately. Steve Soto over at The Left Coaster has been writing a series of articles describing the poor methodology used by many of the polls getting lots of press. Apparently the samples they are using have disproportionately large numbers of self-identified Republicans. The result of the coverage of these polls is of course to discourage people who want to get rid of our Uncumbent and replace him with an elected president. Don't believe the polls. They are all based on the flawed premise that the voter turnout this year will match the pattern established in recent presidential elections. But the whole polling thing uncovers another flaw in our electoral system. As much as both candidates will claim that they don't pay attention to the polls, it is clear that in reality our elections have become massive marketing campaigns which are all about finding the right packaging, rather than sincere efforts to enable the electorate to get to know who the candidates are and what they stand for.
While this commodification of politics may serve some purpose, it is certainly not aiding the promulgation of democracy. Certainly the attempt to create a dubious imagery of a politician's background has a long and storied history, yet the media saturation and candidate control in today's world have taken this farce to a whole new level. We now have campaign stops that are scripted for television, rather than television coverage of candidate appearances. We have one pair of candidates who have gone so far as to pre-screen their audiences so that rather than informing an interested electorate they are running pep rallies for the Kool-Aid drinking throngs. Why taxpayer money should be used to underwrite such sophistry is beyond me. And why the supposed guardians of the first amendment, the so-called liberal media, play along with this farce is even more mystifying.
So I propose yet another alteration to the legal framework for our elections. Outlaw polling. Well, that's a little extreme. Clearly there is a legitimate academic use for polling data. So, how about just outlawing tabulation during the campaign? That's right, polls are taken, but all of the data is sealed until after the election. Imagine the experience of going into election day with no idea at all as to where things stand? Doesn't that seem much more likely to get the electorate engaged than our present system? The publication of polls discourages supporters of both projected winners and projected losers, which suggests that polling itself suppresses the vote and skews election results in a non-knowable way. A classic example of the probe effect: by measuring the mood of the electorate and then publishing the result, the pollsters are changing the mood of the electorate. Clearly this is bad for democracy.
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