Sharon Kennedy: The questionable art of polling
After the polling disaster of the 2016 election, it’s no wonder most of us have no faith in polls conducted by Gallup, cable news networks, FiveThirtyEight, RealClearPolitics and a host of other pollsters across the country including the well-respected Pew Research Center. If we look closely at the number of persons who participate in polls, we’ll see the sampling is usually less than 2,000 with a plus or minus margin of 3.8 percent. With so few participants and such a large margin of error, the chances of getting an accurate reflection of how people will vote are slim.
But we’ll continue to hear about poll results until the night of the presidential election. At that time, we’ll know which ones were spot on and which ones missed by a mile. That’s because people who respond to polls are as unreliable and unpredictable as the weather. Between 8 in the morning and 10 at night, we’ve changed our minds at least a dozen times. There’s no reason to expect us to remain true to one candidate throughout the mindless two-year presidential campaign.
Polls are like the rest of us. They’re indecisive and basically meaningless. That’s not to say most of us go through the motions of living much like Ken and Barbie. Oh, no. I’m not inferring Thoreau was right that, “the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.” I’m not saying that at all. We’re not plastic, brainless dolls, and we’re certainly not desperate, but our condition is. We run around like hamsters in cages, and the faster we turn the wheel, the farther behind we get. We struggle to pay for basic necessities while we watch inept politicians spend our tax dollars without ever conducting an opinion poll regarding our feelings on how and where our money is spent.
With prices on everything shooting up at a breakneck pace, we juggle the cost of name brands against those sold at Dollar General. Along with perfecting the art of juggling, we’ve also become magicians. We’ve learned exactly how many miles we can drive on fumes before our vehicle stops moving, our brakes freeze up and our steering wheel refuses to turn. People who have no job can’t afford health insurance so they’ve become their own medical adviser. They either concoct medicines using what are usually considered weeds or they learn to live with pain until they can’t stand it anymore and commit suicide.
We’re not sacrificial lambs in the biblical sense, but in the political arena. Unlike those bloodthirsty Romans who threw Christians to the lions merely for sport, our leaders have thrown us to the wolves of Wall Street for greed. We see the results of it everywhere. The price of essentials like food and housing keep climbing. If we own a vehicle, we use it as little as possible because gas is nearly $4 a gallon.
Where are the polls that reflect our outrage? Such polls would make sense to me. Do I care which candidate is ahead a year prior to the election? No. Will their platforms influence me to change my vote on Election Day? No. Do I believe anything politicians say? No. Do I believe the Capitol and even the White House have become nursing homes for the aged clinging to their powerful canes? Yes.
Maybe we are a nation of Kens and Barbies remaining in whatever positions our leaders have twisted us. We’re human caricatures too deaf and dumb to rise up and demand a poll reflective of our feelings instead of our politics.
— To contact Sharon Kennedy, send her an email at sharonkennedy1947@gmail.com. Kennedy's new book, "View from the SideRoad: A Collection of Upper Peninsula Stories," is available from her or Amazon.
This article originally appeared on The Holland Sentinel: Sharon Kennedy: The questionable art of polling
