Tuesday, November 16, 2010

2012 General Election Polling: An Exercise in Futility

Already, we're seeing some state-level polls on the 2012 general election crop up. I'm not linking them for the simple reason that they have exactly zero value to anyone other than pollsters or news outlets trying to generate some buzz. For the sake of everyone involved, they should be ignored. At this time in the 2008 election cycle, John Edwards was ahead in the Iowa caucus polls and appeared to be the most viable Democrat in a large number of Southern and Midwestern states. In the middle of the Democratic primaries, polls showed Obama losing to McCain in a number of states he would go on to win, as some voters who preferred Hillary Clinton didn't come back to the Democratic fold until late August.

Electioneers should be thinking about how to get viable candidates into as many House and Senate races, how to reignite the Obama campaign's volunteers, and so forth. Don't worry too much about the polls.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

We really should start polling for 2016.