More often than not I’m going to look carefully at public opinion poll results.
In this election season, we’re being inundated with them. Republican-leaning polls say one thing; Democratic-leaning polls say another. I prefer to look most closely at polls unaffiliated with either party, or certain ideological think tanks, or media outlets I know to have bias in either direction.
But one recent poll has me wondering: Is this one even relevant to anything?
Hillary Clinton leads Bernie Sanders by 25 percentage points nationally, according to a poll released by NBC News and the Wall Street Journal.
The relevancy issue?
Well, consider a couple of things.
They’re both running for the Democratic Party presidential nomination, which means that they’re not going to face each other in a national election. Therefore, they are battling state by state: Iowa, then New Hampshire, then South Carolina . . . and on it goes.
They’ll get to Texas in early March.
Therefore, whether Clinton beats Sanders by a single percent or a million percent in a national poll doesn’t matter one bit.
How are they faring in each state?
The poll does compare the candidates’ chances against a potential Republican nominee and it shows Clinton faring better against the GOP foe than Sanders.
That’s relevant, I guess.
However, these polls pitting one candidate against the other running in the same party primary simply doesn’t register with me.