Do public opinion polls really matter? Are those who are polled going to elected someone different into office?
I personally think opinion polls do matter but have no effect on election voting people may speak out against their disapproval of how the GOP handled the government shutdown but probably wont vote to replace those they put in office.
CNN article about unfavorable GOP & Tea Party Members
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2013/10/22/cnn-poll-gop-tea-party-unfavorables-at-all-time-highs/?hpt=hp_t2
With the way most Americans vote, I don’t think polls really affect much. People tend to vote AGAINST candidates rather than for them. The favorability of the GOP doesn’t have much to do with the disdain for Obama and his administration. However, I do think that the polls give us a good luck at the disposition of Americans. While the GOP itself isn’t a problem, the Tea Party is a bastardization of Conservative values. It gives me hope that the majority of Americans do not support this kind of politics.
ReplyDeletePolls are not crystal balls into the future with regards to planned voting or policy implementation. Many times, polls that are taken end up being completely refuted by action. The poll that was mentioned in the Why We Fight propaganda film said that 19/20 Americans did not favor getting involved in Europe prior to Pearl Harbor. Well, Pearl Harbor was the work of the Japanese, not Hitler. Therefore, one would expect American resolve to fight to be completely focused on the Japanese, yet tens of thousands of Americans were deployed to the European theatre despite the polls that were dealing with Europe and not Japan. (The propaganda machine of the government likely (read actually) had something to do with persuading Americans to fight Hitler as well as the Japanese; in fact, Roosevelt's plan was to take out Hitler before focusing all of his attention on the Japanese, as if they were a less important threat somehow even though they were the ones that attacked the US). Nonetheless, here are two interesting and funny satirizations of polling really worth watching that prove its fallacies and susceptibility to manipulation/conjuring.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/mon-august-17-2009/poll-bearers
http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/daily-show-those-divergent-useless-and-acc
I don't think public opinion polls matter too much. American people are loyal to their political parties, they may show disapproval, but at the end of the day still vote along party lines. Yes American's may be eager to elect someone new but I think it may be of someone of the same political party.
ReplyDelete