There are so many of these nowadays, asking important questions such as whether the respondent believes that Bush is intelligent or whether it was a great idea to occupy Iraq. I refuse to believe in the representativeness of these samples; the alternative would be to uproot the whole Snakepit Inc. and start life again on planet qyz45. Which I might have to do anyway, but there is still hope.
So I decided to create my own presidential poll. Here it is:
1. If you had to have emergency surgery performed on you, would you choose to have George Bush or John Kerry as the head surgeon?
2. If you had to choose either John Kerry or George Bush as the reading teacher of your only child, which would it be?
3. What have you learned from the first two questions about the desirability of having George Bush re-elected to run the world for another interminable four years?
a) Nothing. I already knew that he is an idiot.
b) Nothing. I am an idiot.
c) Ahaa! I guess I should vote for Kerry, then. Good for you.
Now, this might come across as a tad biased, but so might other polls that are actually treated with reverence. You could also argue that my blog is not a good way to reach deep into the American mainstream, but then I'd argue that the same could be said of many of the polls, too, especially the Internet ones.
Polls are very imperfect, in other words. What's sad is that they can have an impact, by telling us how supposedly the masses think, and by making some of us change their expressed opinions to match whatever is touted as the so-called public opinion. This is probably quite different from people's private opinions which often consist of I-don't-know-and-I-don't-care.
The only polling that really matters is voting.