“Bush takes over lead in polls, makes gains among women.”
–‘surges ahead of Gore after chats with Oprah and Regis’
It seems Bush has gotten a boost in the polls after becoming all soft and mushy on TV. Not much outside the margin of error, but a noticeable boost nonetheless. Of course, the Republican spin is that women voters liked Bush’s ideas on taxes and Social Security.
First Gore gets a boost because he kisses his wife. Now it’s Bush’s turn.
I don’t really know where to even go with this question. Are the poll numbers just a coincidence, or is our next president going to be the guy who comes across most like a daytime TV audience member?
I don’t want to throw this all on the backs of women. I can envision some men voting for a candidate because they saw him hunting, or playing football, or riding in a tank (ok, scratch that last one). But in this case there seems to be a definite push towards “feminization” of the candidates in order to win.
Is it just a symptom of our society, that we buy products because of how they are marketed rather than how well they perform? Are our political decisions also destined to be made on such a flimsy framework?
I just can’t get over poll nubers changing so much because of a kiss or a chat on Oprah. I do not see this as a good thing.
Some people do want a President who is in ‘touch’ with them and all feely-gropy-emotional; re: Bill Clinton feeling our pain.
But, much more likely- the polls change because polls change based upon who was being asked and what they were being asked and what assumptions go into the poll and who holds the poll, and while there’s some change in some peoples’ outlooks, the change is a much slower and deeper process than any poll would make you believe.
But the media considers polls an absolute, up-to-the-minute, completely accurate measure of how all Americans truly view the race, and thus when those numbers shift, there is a sudden rush to immediately assign it to something recent that happened.
So what happens is that a housewife in Iowa reads something about Gore in the convention coverage in her newspaper, decides she likes Gore’s stance on an issue, and when a pollster calls her up to ask her who she’s voting for, she says Gore. Pollsters equate her with .15% of the voting block and 1.38% of the married female voting block. The media, seeing this 1.38% jump in all American married women’s support for Gore, flail about for some recent event that must explain it, and grab onto “The Kiss”.
I saw Gov. Bush on Oprah, and thought he did rather well.
Small chats like Oprah’s play to Gov. Bush’s strong points, and minimize his weak ones (he is not a great public speaker).
I think his little chat w/Oprah did help him among women voters. He came across as a family man, with a troubled past that he’s acknowledged and overcame; he was actually seen as a family man, not some right-wing fundie reactionary some seem to want to portray him as (to his credit, VP Gore hasn’t played this card; then again, he really hasn’t had to, what with hordes of followers all-too-willing to shout it from the rooftops).
Really what idiot would vote for Bush and Gore over issues? Voting for someone because his lies are better than the opponents is hardly a mark of being smart.
Perhaps I’m a little paranoid, but I think the polls are bu****it. I don’t know what they’re asking, how they’re phrasing the questions, or who they’re asking. I don’t know why I should care about what these polls claim to show.
the media needs something to fill up its air time and stupid psychological nonsense is as good a thing as any. the stupid psychological nonsense probably does affect some people tho. it’s just fluff until a couple of weeks b4 the election.
I think that the polls are a reasonably accurate reflection of what the voters are thinking. When was the last time the polls picked the wrong guy? Such tactics as appearing on Oprah are extremely effective because most non-partisan voters decide mostly on non-issues related criteria.
Examples:
“Micheal Dukakis looks funny in a tank, I’ll vote for Bush.”
“Bush checked his watch during the debate, I’ll vote for Clinton”
I think that most non-partisan voters decide on a candidate on a similar basis as to who they would want as a son-in-law.
My solution is to give voters a current events quiz before letting them vote. Though I am not sure this would produce better leaders it would produce better campaigns.
You would be right if you compared only two polls, especially if done by different organizations. But in this case, the shift to and away from Al Gore was measured by numerous polls, which showed him picking up a 3-10 point lead, and now range between a 3 point lead or deficit for either candidate.
It cannot be emphasized enough that a shift of this magnitude, while enough to change the results of an election, actually involves about 3 or 4 percent of the electorate switching sides. Changes far greater than that can happen alot quicker.
Yes, pepperlandgirl. I’ve been polled. Or rather, “they” attempted to poll me. I refused, based on my belief that polls exercise undue influence on the actions of politicians. But they did make the attempt. Of course, I gets lots of other calls asking for my opinion on all sorts of other stuff, too. I guess they consider me a “normal American, age 18-35, with a household income of blah blah blah.” If they only knew.
I’ve long thought this would be a swell idea. Not a legal idea, but I can fantasize, right?
I think a poll, if done well, can provide a good snapshot of a present condition. However, it seems to me that polls crap out if trying to predict an outcome. If a person can be swayed 6 times in 4 weeks because of a particular commercial, or sound bite, or “looking at his watch”-type event, what good is trying to predict from a poll, anyway?
Is there a case that a sequence of polls (like a sequence of still frames adding up to a movie) can produce a robust result?
Is the electorate driving the polls, or are the polls driving the electorate?
For all we shout and yell about polls, they are, for the most part, accurate as all hell. How many times, in Presidential elections that you can find, have properly conducted polls taken just before the election been wrong? They might call a race 49-51 that ends up 51-49, or predict a 54% win and it ends up 56%, but how often are they wrong beyond their stated margin of error? How often does Gallup call for some guy to get 55% of the vote and he gets 42%, or 71%?
I’ll tell you how often; next to never. When the pros like Gallup do polls, they’re remarkably accurate.
And to answer divemaster’s question:
You answered it yourself in that same post:
Obviously, the electorate’s driving the polls, since the electorate’s swaying one way or the other. If the polls drove the electorate, the first candidate to get ahead would stay ahead, since the first poll that showed him in the lead would pull the electorate with it.
