Incredible, Edible Polls

 By Florida Bill

                         Want to know who is ahead, who is behind, who is surging and who made an intentional or unwitting gaffe in the political maneuvering to become their party's standard bearer in the presidential election of 2016?  Want to know how Americans feel at any given moment about anyone in a long list of political candidates?  The crystal ball is in the hands of those swamis known as pollsters, and they are delivering big time.

                         Polling blather is nonstop even though the primaries and the election of 2016 are  a long way off.

                         How accurate are these telephone shotgun polls?  In principle,  we are told that a public opinion poll taps into the heads of  a "scientifically constituted" group of  maybe 400 to 1,000 persons, and that this carefully selected sample must look and act like the larger population they come from in every important way.  The sample must have almost exactly the same proportions of men and women, blacks, whites and Hispanics; Democrats and Republicans and old and young people as in the entire population. This small sampling is supposedly accurate to within plus or minus three percentage points.  Wow, quite a  feat.

                          As if that isn't hard enough, changes in technology are complicating the leg work for pollsters: landlines are giving way to mobile phones; and users on-the-go are less patient with long drawn out questionnaires. Without a doubt, the money saving robo-calls with their computerized voices annoy many people and prompt them to hang up.

                         So scaring up answers from the scientific aggregate, is, I sense, no simple task.  It's  even more remarkable, considering that the United States has more than 300 million persons living in some 19,000 cities, towns and villages; and these communities are situated inside 3,141 counties within our 50 states.  And this entire profile is spread out over about 3 million square miles of land and water.  Ain't computers grand?                     

                        But any geek will tell you there is an underlying principle in all this data crunching: garbage in, garbage out.  Pollsters draft the questions and wording makes a lot of difference in the responses. Questions in polls are seldom yes or no, but rather open-ended types with scripted choices and often they involve favorability,  ranging from very high to terrible.   If you want the numbers to rise, fall or surge for a favored one,  you can provide a carefully worded pitch, and if you happen to match it to the right geographical area: presto, new findings and new leaders.  But of course, we all know that would never happen.

            TV viewers and political groupies have an uncanny addiction to these polls which reveal the comparative popularity and percentages of candidates vying to become their party's nominee.  Updates from polls and surveys arrive with great regularity, "like every 15 minutes," said one candidate.

                          Is Donald Trump leading or did he slip a bit?  What about his comment about "anchor babies"?  Very "offensive," but did it hurt?  Dr. Carson is closing the gap, but he is down on Muslims--but wait, has that actually helped him gain supporters and millions in additional donations.  Is Huckabee too Christian, or Cruz too conservative.  Is Rubio too inexperienced,  is Bush too "low energy?"  

            Is Hillary Clinton's lead among Democrats shrinking, amid her email problems and Socialist opponent Bernie Sanders'call for more "free stuff" for Americans?

             And what about the impact from the debates. Who cares what you thought after watching them; the polls say that Carly Fiorina's numbers are moving up and so are Marco Rubio's. Joe Biden's popularity is being measured and his numbers bandied about, even though he isn't running yet. And while Clinton is still hanging on, she may be lagging in those bellwether states of New Hampshire and Iowa, where Sanders is ahead, although different polls offer different numbers and margins.

             In fact, there are so many different polls conducted by so many different pollsters that they bump heads and create what Bill O'Reilly might call a real "spin zone."  It's all endlessly fascinating, but does anybody believe it, other than the pollsters themselves and the media that is so eager to disseminate the latest findings?                                      

                         I consider this endless babbling over who may or may not become their party's standard bearer with lots of, shall we say, skepticism.  For sure someone is ahead, and maybe the polls are right.  But maybe they aren't. In a past presidential polling period, I remember that polls put a screaming Howard Dean ahead of other Democrats and Mike Huckabee and Michelle Bachman were riding the Republican high ground. Needless to say, none of them became presidential nominees.

            At this early stage in the election process, with primary elections still more than four months away, voters may be skeptical, but aren't decisions about donations and campaign tactics, and even the viability of a candidate, being based on these never ending polls. Is this dangerous to the Democratic process? Maybe--but then, what other criteria to do we have? The opinions of political experts and pundits? Maybe the polls aren't so bad after all.

         However, my own experience with polls has not been that impressive. I was queried recently by a telephone voice on a polling mission, but the caller spoke such poor English that declaring whether I was more likely, most likely, less likely or least likely to do this, that or the other thing was too tedious and I just hung up.

             There is good and bad in this polling frenzy.  But, hey, this is the time when political madness sweeps the nation in anticipation of a Presidential election.  It does not usually get going this early, but this year with so many candidates, hype and buzz, it seems to be in full swing.  The polls keep it all moving at a torrid  pace, and with these wizards, we know it all--until the next poll comes out.