Full disclosure here at the top: I have been guilty of the very thing I’m going off on in this quick rant of a column.
I will be writing this from the viewpoint of conservatives because I have no idea what the libs are ever thinking.
For the longest time now, we have had a highly dysfunctional love/hate relationship with political polls. And I do mean love/hate — there’s no middle ground when it comes to how we view the latest poll, especially during an election year.
Polling regarding political races has been around for a long time, obviously. As with so many things, the internet in the 21st century has made it all ridiculous. Where once the general public had to wait for the network evening news or talk radio to deliver the results of the latest poll, we now have polling data being flung around like feces in a chimpanzee enclosure at a zoo.
We’ve been breaking up with pre-election and exit polling since the dawn of the current millennium. Twenty-three-and-a-half years later, we’re still getting back together with them, only to break up shortly thereafter.
Conservatives were given the best reason ever to not believe the polls in 2016. Right up until election day, polls were predicting that Granny Maojackets would beat Donald Trump by 587 million electoral votes. Had we all believed the polls everyone might have just stayed home, made some nachos, and drowned our sorrows in beer. Personally, I did drown myself in beer on election night, but it was celebratory beer after it was announced that Trump won Pennsylvania.
Lesson learned, right? Yeah, not so much.
Much to the chagrin of my conservative friends and colleagues, I remained skeptical throughout 2020 of any polls that had Trump ahead of Biden. I began to waiver a bit near the end, but my skepticism won out.
Sadly, in 2022 I began to sip the Kool-Aid again. A lot of people on the right did. Most people on the right did. The particular kind of crack that polls get us hooked on is that, just when we’re convinced that we’re done with them forever, they tell us what we want to hear.
“I’m sorry that I haven’t called for a year, but you look amazing tonight. Wanna grab a drink?”
It’s happening again among conservatives, less than a year after the polls stood us up for that drink. Trump is up by more than 40 points, so DeSantis should just stay home, goes the conversation. If anyone out there should know that polls are silver-tongued lying pieces of garbage, it’s Trump supporters.
I’m doing my best to quit the polls cold turkey. For example, I don’t believe that the Trump lead in the polls for the GOP nomination is impossible for DeSantis to overcome, but I also don’t believe any of the polls that say Trump can’t win the general election. Quitting them is a bit easier for me now, thanks to the fact that I have an easily searchable history that shows just how drunk I got on polling data leading up to last year’s Red Trickle. Embarrassment is a powerful motivator.
Because I know all too well how my readers like to respond to things like this, I know that a lot of people will insist that they pay no attention to the polls. Bully for them. Also, I don’t believe it for a moment.
My years-long, unhealthy relationship with political polling has made my skepticism even stronger.
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