Polls don't matter.
Polls don't matter.
To any highly-committed, very conservative or very liberal, non-pragmatic, uncompromising voter, this is absolute axiom. It is a self-evident assumption for the 10-15% of extreme right or left voters, polls are biased in favor of the center, voters who are less likely to vote than those extremely committed, ideological extremists.
The only problem is, exit polls and actual election results from the last 50 or 100 years indicate that the “center-bias” in polling reflects a blatant center bias in the American electorate. Uncommitted voters, people of mainly one party most of the time, who don't care all that much about Fox News or MSNBC or Rasmussen or McClatchy polling, do turn out and vote, almost 90% of them, every four years. Off-year elections have lower turnouts, but that's true of American voters in general, not just uncommitted ones (though moreso than for highly-committed voters.)
None of that matters at all to the highly-committed, highly-ideological voter. It is axiomatic to the attendees at CPAC, for example, that their ability to steer the political discussion and pick issues that will make the evening news (see: re-litigating women's rights or the Fourteenth Amendment) mean that they can overrule polls at will. A leap of faith from that platform splatters itself on the bedrock principle that polls simply don't matter, that in fact uncommitted voters never make any real decisions because they don't show up when it really matters, at events like CPAC and the Iowa Straw Poll and the New Hampshire primaries: the events that make the news of election years, the horse racing events that make the Umptuple-Crown of election year news.
The only thing that matters to highly-committed voters is, they are right about everything. It's a comforting feeling, being right about everything, I'm sure, even though I've yet to feel it myself. Righteousness is the very best form of Onanistic self-pleasure feedback, in that it comes not only with the completely convincing feeling of superiority to everyone else in the world, but is also self-justifying, since it only happens when one is not only right about everything, but everyone else in the world is both a fool and one's moral inferior. Truly, an acme moment in anyone's life. I felt that way for a few minutes when I got an A on my final performance exam in Frisbee class my senior year of high school. You should have seen my backhand skip; it went like 100 feet straight into the hands of the guy I was teamed with.
My point, of course, is this: that the feeling of righteousness is just as useless in November when the whole of the electorate votes, as it is in high school P.E. It feels great for a few moments (or in the case of highly-committed voters whose axiom is that righteousness is more important than polls, roughly 47 months of every 4 years) but it doesn't make the slightest difference in 80+% of people's lives, and it certainly doesn't decide their votes.
We can discuss later, how righteousness doesn't actually affect highly-committed voters' decisions either, given they make up their minds based on their own righteousness rather than that of any nominee's.
Updated to note fanatical Ron Paul supporters are firmly in the "polls don't count" camp. So firmly, they don't even care what vote counts are.
To any highly-committed, very conservative or very liberal, non-pragmatic, uncompromising voter, this is absolute axiom. It is a self-evident assumption for the 10-15% of extreme right or left voters, polls are biased in favor of the center, voters who are less likely to vote than those extremely committed, ideological extremists.
The only problem is, exit polls and actual election results from the last 50 or 100 years indicate that the “center-bias” in polling reflects a blatant center bias in the American electorate. Uncommitted voters, people of mainly one party most of the time, who don't care all that much about Fox News or MSNBC or Rasmussen or McClatchy polling, do turn out and vote, almost 90% of them, every four years. Off-year elections have lower turnouts, but that's true of American voters in general, not just uncommitted ones (though moreso than for highly-committed voters.)
None of that matters at all to the highly-committed, highly-ideological voter. It is axiomatic to the attendees at CPAC, for example, that their ability to steer the political discussion and pick issues that will make the evening news (see: re-litigating women's rights or the Fourteenth Amendment) mean that they can overrule polls at will. A leap of faith from that platform splatters itself on the bedrock principle that polls simply don't matter, that in fact uncommitted voters never make any real decisions because they don't show up when it really matters, at events like CPAC and the Iowa Straw Poll and the New Hampshire primaries: the events that make the news of election years, the horse racing events that make the Umptuple-Crown of election year news.
The only thing that matters to highly-committed voters is, they are right about everything. It's a comforting feeling, being right about everything, I'm sure, even though I've yet to feel it myself. Righteousness is the very best form of Onanistic self-pleasure feedback, in that it comes not only with the completely convincing feeling of superiority to everyone else in the world, but is also self-justifying, since it only happens when one is not only right about everything, but everyone else in the world is both a fool and one's moral inferior. Truly, an acme moment in anyone's life. I felt that way for a few minutes when I got an A on my final performance exam in Frisbee class my senior year of high school. You should have seen my backhand skip; it went like 100 feet straight into the hands of the guy I was teamed with.
My point, of course, is this: that the feeling of righteousness is just as useless in November when the whole of the electorate votes, as it is in high school P.E. It feels great for a few moments (or in the case of highly-committed voters whose axiom is that righteousness is more important than polls, roughly 47 months of every 4 years) but it doesn't make the slightest difference in 80+% of people's lives, and it certainly doesn't decide their votes.
We can discuss later, how righteousness doesn't actually affect highly-committed voters' decisions either, given they make up their minds based on their own righteousness rather than that of any nominee's.
Updated to note fanatical Ron Paul supporters are firmly in the "polls don't count" camp. So firmly, they don't even care what vote counts are.