Path: bloom-picayune.mit.edu!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!americast.com!americast.com!americast-post Newsgroups: americast.twt.news From: americast-post@AmeriCast.Com Organization: American Cybercasting Approved: americast-post@AmeriCast.com Subject: How the poll cats chill the party Date: Fri, 30 Oct 92 15:33:28 EST Message-ID: \SE A;NATION;PRUDEN ON POLITICS \HD How the poll cats chill the party \BY Wesley Pruden \CR THE WASHINGTON TIMES Why are there so many polls, when people say they are so sick of them, and they're all poles apart, anyway? In 1972, there were only three national polls. This year, God help us, there are 259. That's not a misprint. Two five nine. A half-dozen polling organizations have been calling thousands of voters in all 50 states in these last two weeks before the Nov. 3 election, and hundreds of state and local news organizations - newspapers, magazines and radio and television stations - are conducting their own polls. Candidates, too. Some newspapers try to swear off polls, including this one. George Washington never had to put up with stuff like this. We ran the daily tracking poll of Political Hotline, an electronic newsletter for political writers and other junkies, during the last fortnight of the 1988 campaign. It was remarkably accurate, but in the belief that polls can mock the deliberative purpose of campaigns, we said, "no more polls." That was then, and this is now. This year we bought Mason-Dixon's poll because it concentrates on the Electoral College, a compilation of state-by-state totals. Maybe we'll pass in '96. (We probably won't.) The Seattle Times has taken a pledge and so far the editors there are still on the wagon. "Who's ahead" polls, says Michael Fancher, the executive editor, "are the junk food of our democratic process." He's absolutely right, but he's also right when he concedes that "readers love to talk about them." Even when they're accurate, polls divert attention from the candidates and whatever it is that the candidates are saying. But it's also true that often the candidates aren't saying anything, or they're not saying it in a way that makes anyone want to listen to it or read about it, so newspapermen resort to talking about who's ahead. Talking about who's ahead, says Mr. Fancher, "is a little like arguing whether a movie deserves two stars or three without talking about its plot." True, but people who read movie reviews, like people who read about horse races and elections, want the stars, too. Polls can be fun. The late surge by President Bush, who may be on the verge of accomplishing something truly heroic in the way of barn-burning finishes, is catnip for the New York City tabloids, which are often entertaining in the way most newspapers used to be before the accountants and the Ivy League mafia took over so many of them. CLOSER (Newsday). BREATHING DOWN BILL'S NECK (The Post). A LATE POLL VAULT (The Daily News). People say they don't like polls, and so do the candidates, sometimes. When the president was down by double digits a fortnight ago, he told a crowd in Georgia: "Don't believe these crazy polls! Don't believe these nutty pollsters!" He's more tolerant now, as befits a man with "the big mo" as the campaign stretches toward the wire, now only five days away. Mr. Bush told a crowd yesterday in Michigan: "I'm encouraged by the way these polls that we live and die by are shaping up." Nearly everybody, even the men and women who make their living asking impertinent questions of strangers, agrees that polls make the media lazy. "We're seeing an excessive amount of horse race analysis," says Lee Miringoff of Marist Institute. But he makes the point that even if the media swear off polls - which they won't - the candidates will continue to commission them. Not knowing, or even not guessing, about how well you're doing is agony. "Why shouldn't the voters get a look at the kind of information the campaigns have access to?" he asks. "If a candidate is acting desperately, now you know why." There's nothing inherently wrong in polls, unless news organizations report polls and forget about the Gennifers, the economic game plans, draft-dodging, renounced tax promises and all the other stuff that the media pretend to make a big deal of but really want to use only as fodder for more polls. The beauty part for the voters, of course, is that on Tuesday they can make monkeys of us all. This article is copyright 1992 The Washington Times. Redistribution to other sites is not permitted except by arrangement with American Cybercasting Corporation. For more information, send-email to usa@AmeriCast.COM