The Crisis of Polling

The Crisis of Polling Feb. 8, 2016 By George Friedman

Polls are now less reliable in predicting the outcome of elections, as we witnessed after the recent Iowa Caucuses.  Last week, in the run-up to the first vote that would help determine the Democratic and Republican nominees for U.S.president, polls said that Donald Trump would win the Iowa Caucuses. He didn't. There are many explanations for this, the leading ones being that his supporters were heavily tilted toward those who had never shown up at a caucus before, that the  campaign's ground game was off and that his supporters didn't turn out to caucus.   These are reasonable explanations and certainly part of the answer, but the issue of polling accuracy goes beyond Trump.

• British Prime Minister David Cameron was trailing, according to polls, prior to the election in 2015. He won a solid victory.
• Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was supposed to be in the fight of his life before the 2015 parliamentary election according to Turkish polls. He won a substantial victory.
• It also seemed that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would lose in 2015, and then he won.
• And in 2012, Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney's pollsters genuinely believed he would beat Barack Obama. He didn't.

For many years, election polls were extraordinarily accurate.They may still have value, but they can no longer reliably predict which candidate will get the most votes on election day.It is important to understand why this has changed and how it impacts politics, bearing in mind that this is a global, not solely American, phenomenon.......

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My Take - The author lists some interesting points as to the problems pollsters face in this instant communicaiton world.  But the real reason polls are all out of whack compared to reality is because they're nothing more than conclusions in search of data.  And any data that's not in the favor of those conclusions are dismissed in whatever way pollsters can do so, including skewing the questions in such a way as to get the response they want or can use.  Pollsters are no longer trying to determine what the public wants or thinks.  They're now formers of public opinion trying to tell the public what they should think and want. 

On a personal note - unless a poll agrees with my views, I haven't believed a poll for over 25 years.  Is that reasonable?  Yes, because my veiws are now and always have been based on what I see going on in reality.  All I'm interested in are the facts and I'm prepared to follow those facts wherever they may lead.  Not these leftist pollsters efforts to remake reality.  The real problem is that there are so many people who have no real core values any longer - they're what the "moderates" call mallable.  They read very little, never or rarely read books and get their news from the television or the local newspaper.  An absolute formula for sustainable ignorance.  Just exactly what the left has been striving for since the French Revolution.  That's why as many as 30 to 40 percent of voters in the primaries don't know who they're going to vote for until the end of the last debate, or even on election day. 

Jonathan Gruber of MIT was villified because he said "Obamacare relied on the "stupidity of the American voter."  And he beleived it then and I have no doubt he believes it today.  He was even villified by the Democratics holding his leash.  But reality demonstrates one incontrovertible fact - he's right.   

In 2012 this article was published, Studies Show Most Americans Are Too Stupid toVote, where-in the author notes: "when asked questions about our government and political leaders, the survey results found:"

• 85% did not know the meaning of the “the rule of law.”
• 82% could not name “two rights stated in the Declaration of Independence.”
• 75% were not able to correctly answer “What does the judiciary branch do?”
• 71% were unable to identify the Constitution as the “supreme law of the land.”
• 68% did not know how many justices are on the Supreme Court.
• 63% could not name one of their two US Senators.
• 62% could not identify “What happened at the Constitutional Convention?”
• 62% could not answer “the name of the Speaker of the US House.”
  

"Who doesn’t want the highest possible number of people to vote?  I don’t.  My vote should not have to compete with that of a moron who can’t blurt out “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” when asked to name the rights mentioned in the Declaration of Independence. (A “moron” is someone with a mental age between 8 and 12, for those of you who vote Democrat.)  If you don’t know that the Constitution is the supreme law of the land, you should not be allowed to vote–photo ID or not.  Nor should your political opinions carry weight among the 15 percent in this country who actually know something.  Combined with another survey released last week showing that liberals are politically ignorant, closed-minded, judgmental, hate-mongers, you realize that the voting franchise has been diluted too far."

And some of you think my views are hate speech.  Well - truth isn't hate speech.  It's just the truth!