2016 Voter's Guide: The Influence of Polls

     Every election cycle deluges the voter with a thousand polls.  The popularity of candidates or causes is displayed in order to win your financial support or to sway your vote.  While most polls are generally close in their assessment, some have been so wrong as to give the voter pause.  How much influence should we allow a published poll to have on our vote?
     The best use of a poll is illustrated by Abraham Lincoln.  He believed he was accountable to the public mandate:  "What I want to get done is what the people desire to have done, and the question for me is how to find that out exactly."  Lincoln was looking for a means to identify the central concerns of his constituents so that he might be held accountable to them.
     Polls can also show how to make your candidate appeal to the voting public or show the popularity of an issue a candidate might support or oppose.  They are not perfect, however.  Polls can fall prey to the following errors:

• Polls can use samples that are not representative of the population that actually votes.  Even with their weighting techniques, they may fail due to a faulty demographic model.  Sampling errors may be more than the margin of error can balance.
• The wording of questions is important because it might just give clues to the interviewee as to what kind of answer is expected.  Cue-taking and media-framing may result in an answer that is not candid.  What if a person names the candidate he believes you want to hear instead of the one he will vote for in the privacy of a voting booth? 
• Polls for candidates may not ask questions about truly important issues or give opportunities for more open-ended answers.  A candidate may be appealing who has not actually addressed your concerns.  America may be in a mess, but not the mess the pollsters are polling for.
• Polls are subject to the band-wagon effect.  They may be used to call people to join one candidate or issue because a majority of others are.  The voter just votes like he is told everyone else will without doing his own due diligence.  The vote for the best candidate is compromised;  He now votes for the one most likely to win.

     In the end, we don't know how the vote will go until all votes are counted.  Every citizen has the responsibility to cast an educated vote.  So, 1.  Know your views.  2.  Know specifically your candidate's views.  3.  Know your candidate.  Will he be persistent?  Will he be able to convince others?  This fall, vote for the person who will both represent and advocate for your views.