Polls can change; people's opinions can change. Voting intentions can change, and I think it would be a silly leader, a silly political party, that would assume that we have it sewn up.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
They may then be willing to cast principled votes based on an educated understanding of the public interest in the face of polls suggesting that the public itself may have quite a different understanding of where its interest lies.
You cannot be driven by the polls. The polls change all the time; they're easily manipulated by whoever wants to ask those poll questions; they go up; they go down.
I think we have a fascinating new and quite dominant input into politics - and it wont go away. From time to time, people articulate a view that we should ban opinion polls, but that's nonsense.
Polls are frequently taken to try to tease out or determine likely directions and trends, but once taken, they belong to the past, requiring that new polls be taken.
In modern politics, polls often serve as the canary in the mine - an early warning signal of danger or trends. But polls can also be used to wag the dog - diverting attention from something significant.
America is inundated with polls. We need a term for being swamped with polls. I would say 'poll-arized,' but that's already in use to describe our political divisions.
Polling is merely an instrument for gauging public opinion. When a president or any other leader pays attention to poll results, he is, in effect, paying attention to the views of the people. Any other interpretation is nonsense.
We can change the direction of the country with our vote.
And if you're getting a poll coming out month after month saying something and then all of a sudden does an enormous swing in one direction - you are dealing with a more volatile electorate than most people believe they have.
If voting changed anything, they'd abolish it.
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