{"id":9433,"date":"2015-05-21T13:55:30","date_gmt":"2015-05-21T13:55:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=9433"},"modified":"2015-05-21T13:55:30","modified_gmt":"2015-05-21T13:55:30","slug":"yes-polls-do-matter-to-pols","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=9433","title":{"rendered":"Yes, polls do matter to pols"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n<p>Politicians are known to stretch the truth, fib a little and, yes, even lie through their teeth.<\/p>\n<p>One of the greatest lies politicians tell us is that &#8220;Polls don&#8217;t matter.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Uh, yes they do.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"wp-embedded-content\" data-secret=\"IhN4fj0nZy\"><p><a href=\"https:\/\/thehill.com\/blogs\/ballot-box\/242785-obamas-favorability-rating-ticks-higher\/\">Obama\u2019s favorability rating ticks higher<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"wp-embedded-content\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts\" security=\"restricted\" style=\"position: absolute; clip: rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);\" title=\"&#8220;Obama\u2019s favorability rating ticks higher&#8221; &#8212; The Hill\" src=\"https:\/\/thehill.com\/blogs\/ballot-box\/242785-obamas-favorability-rating-ticks-higher\/embed\/#?secret=miHd8ma5PV#?secret=IhN4fj0nZy\" data-secret=\"IhN4fj0nZy\" width=\"474\" height=\"267\" frameborder=\"0\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>The Gallup Organization has released some new polling data that show President Obama&#8217;s approval rating among voters is at 53 percent. That&#8217;s not great, but it&#8217;s a lot better than where it was, say, a year or two ago.<\/p>\n<p>His overall poll standing &#8212; taking averages of all the major surveys &#8212; is around 46 percent. Still not great, but not bad, either, for a second-term president heading toward the finish line.<\/p>\n<p>Politicians who say &#8220;Polls don&#8217;t matter&#8221; usually say those things when they&#8217;re trailing in a campaign against the other individual. They make those statements as if to dismiss the bad news they&#8217;re getting from their hired guns. The other candidate, the one who&#8217;s leading? Why he or she thinks polls are great. They use those numbers as affirmation of the job they&#8217;re doing trying to sell whatever snake oil they&#8217;re peddling.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve long ago dismissed the notion of politicians saying they &#8220;pay no attention to polls&#8221; when they&#8217;re pondering key policy decisions. My definition, politicians who want to keep doing their public service jobs, rely on voters&#8217; views on the job they&#8217;re doing.<\/p>\n<p>So, that means they <em>must<\/em> take note of what the polling data are showing.<\/p>\n<p>I wish I could be a fly on the wall of the White House right now, listening to what Barack Obama is saying about the polling data. Sure, he&#8217;ll tell us he&#8217;s doing &#8220;what&#8217;s right for the country.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>He&#8217;s also doing what&#8217;s right for his standing in those polls.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Politicians are known to stretch the truth, fib a little and, yes, even lie through their teeth. One of the greatest lies politicians tell us is that &#8220;Polls don&#8217;t matter.&#8221; Uh, yes they do. Obama\u2019s favorability rating ticks higher The Gallup Organization has released some new polling data that show President Obama&#8217;s approval rating among &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=9433\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Yes, polls do matter to pols<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[540,1841,3660,3700,4170],"class_list":["post-9433","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-political-news","tag-barack-obama","tag-gallup-organization","tag-polling-data","tag-presidency","tag-second-term-presidents"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9433","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9433"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9433\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9433"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9433"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9433"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}