Is it me or have the media become more obsessed with poll coverage in this presidential election cycle than ever before in the history of mass media in this country?
Of particular interest to me are a certain type of intraparty poll that measures candidates’ relative strength against each other.
These surveys drive me nuts. Bonkers, man!
Why? They’re meaningless.
Here’s the latest: NBC says Hillary Rodham Clinton holds a nine-point lead over Democratic Party primary rival U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders. That’s nationally.
What, I ask, does that mean? Does that mean if we had a national political primary that Clinton would beat Sanders by nine percentage points?
Maybe. Except that we aren’t going through a national primary election cycle. Candidates are trudging through these primaries state by bloody state, where the voters in each state have different perspectives, different worries and concerns, different philosophies.
Wisconsin is going to have its Democratic and Republican primaries today. Sanders is favored at this moment to win the Democratic primary; U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz is favored to win the GOP primary.
Still, the media keep reporting that Donald J. Trump holds a diminishing national lead over Cruz and Ohio Gov. John Kasich in a national poll of Republican voters.
I’m running out of ways to say this: I do not care about national intraparty polls. They are notĀ relevant to anything.
Some TV pundits the other evening were saying that they perceive fewer “horse-race” questions coming from the media as the primary campaigns head toward the home stretch. They say they’re hearing more “policy-driven” questions … allegedly.
More policy and fewer polls, please.